A flat portable surface for reading and writing. The oldest form of the word is a slab of clay.
Old French tablete (a small table, a small flat slab), a diminutive of table, from Latin tabula; the oldest tablets were slabs of clay pressed with a stylus long before the word named anything held in a hand and lit up.
A flat portable surface for reading and writing. The oldest form the word ever named was a slab of clay, and the newest one is still flat, and still meant to be written on.