Idea enchirydionu w językach nowożytnych

Looking for the terms for a book for school use, we note that, at least from the end of the twentieth century, only one Polish word: podręcznik means: the basic book for school use for a given subject. We compare the names corresponding to this word in 32 modern languages, with particular emphasis on 10 Slavic languages and 22 languages spoken by the largest number of people in the world. We find that since the publication of Epictetus’s Ἐγχειρίδιον, the concept of the enchiridion (encheiridion), i.e. a choice of information at one’s fingertips, translated to the Latin adjective manualis, was adopted by most modern languages, as we see in the examples analyzed. We also assume that the idea of enchiridion is one of the main forces driving the avalanche of Internet resources and creating new forms of data sharing, without the limitations of a classic paper book.