Hold a `tablet` in your hand and it is always the same shape: a small flat slab, thin, with two smooth faces and a clear edge — something pressed or cut into a neat or disc. Ancient people cut words into it, chemists pressed medicine into it, paper makers glued a stack of sheets into that shape, and modern engineers put a screen on it. The material keeps changing; the flat little slab does not.
From the word’s history
From Old French tablete, "small table", a diminutive of Latin tabula, "a board, plank, writing table". The word entered English around 1300 meaning a small portable slab you could write on, often wax-covered; the medicine sense arrives in the early 1400s and the pad-of-paper sense only in 1880 — each one reusing the same small-flat-board picture.
tablet 來自古法語 tablete「小桌子」，是拉丁語 tabula「木板、平板、書寫檯」的指小形（table 也是同一家的）。大約 1300 年進入英文時，指的是一小片可以隨身帶著寫字的板子，常常塗了蠟；藥片的意思到 1400 年代初才出現，便條本更晚，1880 年才有。每一次新意思，借的都是同一塊「小小的扁平板子」。
Online Etymology Dictionary, entry "tablet" (etymonline.com/word/tablet)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料9 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
tabletnoun/ˈtæblət/
- 1
A slab of clay, stone or wood used for inscription.
- Also mentioned is the Rev. T. Stock, who has a tablet in St John's church [Gloucester] and "who with Raikes established the four original Sunday schools in this parish ... in 1780. From this small beginning sprung that gratuitous system of Christian instruction which has covered the face of England and Wales with schools."
- 2
lifestylereligionA short scripture written by the founders of the Baháʼí Faith.
- 3
A pill; a small, easily swallowed portion of a substance in solid form.
- Many people take vitamin tablets as a food supplement.
- 4
A block of several sheets of blank paper that are bound together at the top; pad of paper.
- Take a full-size writing tablet and follow these steps.
- 5
computingengineeringmathematicsA graphics tablet.
- 6
computingengineeringmathematicsA tablet computer, a type of portable computer.
- 7
A confection made from sugar, condensed milk and butter, produced in flat slabs, with a grainer texture than fudge.
- 8
rail-transportrailwaystransportA type of round token giving authority for a train to proceed over a single-track line.
- The latter's loss of time between Manakau and Levin was due to the mishap of dropping the tablet at Ohau, which entailed an out-of-course stop of 3 min. to recover it.
tabletverb/ˈtæblət/
- 1
To form (a drug, etc.) into tablets.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。