tɛkst tɛkst ˈtɛkst.bʊk the words of something written there were more than a thousand words of text they handed out the printed text of the mayor's speech he wants to reconstruct the original text the main body of a written work (as distinct from illustrations or footnotes etc.) pictures made the text easier to understand a book prepared for use in schools or colleges his economics textbook is in its tenth edition the professor wrote the text that he assigned students to buy a passage from the Bible that is used as the subject of a sermon the preacher chose a text from Psalms to introduce his sermon to send a message by SMS or similar text-based messaging service