Other forms: almanacs
An almanac is a yearly book of facts, dates and tables. A farmer's almanac, the sporting almanac, consult the almanac.
It carries the calendar, the tides, the phases of the moon, sunrise and sunset times and whatever else its readers need — and before the internet an almanac was how most people got that information. Wisden is the cricket one and is published every year since 1864. Note that the word came into English from Arabic, though its earlier history is not settled.
1nounalmanacA yearly book of facts, dates and tables.
“The farmer checked his almanac to see when the next full moon would be.”
almanac is a reference book.
Medieval Latin almanachus came from an Arabic word for a calendar. Its history before Arabic is disputed and may not be Arabic in origin at all.
Arabic
مناخ — climate
xaa
الْمَنَاخ — almanac, calendar
Medieval Latin
almanachus
Old French
almanach
Middle English
almenak
English, today
almanac
From Middle English almenak, from Old French almanach, from Medieval Latin almanachus, from xaa الْمَنَاخ (“almanac, calendar”), from Arabic مناخ (“climate”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA