Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/buky

Etymology
Of origin, with two proposed sources of borrowing: Interrelation between the two meanings is now widely considered uncertain (or even dismissed entirely, e.g. by ), mainly because there is no surviving evidence for beech-based writing among early Germanic and Balto-Slavic peoples. It is possible (as noted by Mallory and Adams) that beech had religious significance for ancient Indo-European people and so was used to inscribe sacred symbols onto. In this case, the extended meaning writ, sign would be directly borrowed from Germanic. A third hypothesis speculates that beechmast was used for counting and bookkeeping, whence the word innately developed a sense of “unit of data representation” → grapheme, writ.
 * For meaning beech: From, formally equivalent to.
 * For meaning books, writs: From (per Vasmer, Trubachev).

Noun

 * 1)  beechmast
 * 2)  writ, grapheme, written sign → letter
 * 3)  books corpus of written inscriptions
 * 1)  books corpus of written inscriptions
 * 1)  books corpus of written inscriptions

Usage notes
The meaning in West and Western South Slavic is beech or beechmast, while in East and Eastern South Slavic, the primary attested meaning is letter (or generally grapheme). It has evolved from an earlier meaning inscription, writ (attested in Church Slavonic). Occassionally, 🇨🇬 could also refer to tally or another bookkeeping mean.

During the development of Church Slavonic writing, 🇨🇬 was chosen as the name for the second letter of the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets, whence the term.

Descendants

 * East Slavic:
 * South Slavic:
 * Old Church Slavonic:
 * Cyrillic:
 * Glagolitic:
 * West Slavic:
 * Sorbian:
 * South Slavic:
 * Old Church Slavonic:
 * Cyrillic:
 * Glagolitic:
 * West Slavic:
 * Sorbian:
 * West Slavic:
 * Sorbian:
 * West Slavic:
 * Sorbian:
 * West Slavic:
 * Sorbian:
 * West Slavic:
 * Sorbian:
 * Sorbian:
 * Sorbian:
 * Sorbian:
 * Sorbian:
 * Sorbian:
 * Sorbian:
 * Sorbian: