Handbook is a native compound, Old English handboc, made the plain Germanic way by gluing two ordinary words together. It was a straight translation of Latin manualis — the Anglo-Saxons calquing the Latin rather than borrowing it.
Then it lost, and its history is a small drama of English's borrowing habit. Middle English displaced handboc with manual, straight from French, and later partly with enchiridion, from Greek. The native word was dead for centuries. It was deliberately reintroduced in 1814 in imitation of German Handbuch, at a moment when English writers admired German scholarship, and was promptly attacked: Richard Chenevix Trench called it "that very ugly and very unnecessary word." It survived the abuse. Manual and handbook now sit side by side, the borrowing and the revival of the thing it replaced.
handbook (n.) Old English handboc "handbook, manual;" see hand (n.) + book (n.). It translates Latin manualis , and was displaced in Middle English by manual (from French), and later in part by enchiridion (from Greek). Reintroduced 1814 in imitation of German Handbuch , but execrated through much of 19c. as "that very ugly and very unnecessary word" [Richard Chenevix Trench, "English Past and Present," 1905].
handbook came in through Old English, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
What gives it away on the page
| compounds instead of borrowings | The native strategy for new words: glue two old ones together.handbook, sheepdog, bookworm |
Old English in the spelling guide · guess another word's family