alphabet
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See also: Alphabet
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English alphabete, borrowed from Late Latin alphabētum, from Ancient Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphábētos), from ἄλφα (álpha) and βῆτα (bêta), the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, Α (A) and Β (B), lowercase forms α and β. The Greek names derived from aleph, the name of the Phoenician letter 𐤀 (ʾ, “ox”) and beth, the name of the letter 𐤁 (b, “house”), so called because they were pictograms of those objects, having developed from the Egyptian hieroglyphs
(𓃾) and
(𓉐).
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Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]alphabet (plural alphabets)
- The set of letters used when writing in a language.
- The Greek alphabet has only twenty-four letters.
- In the first year of school, pupils are taught to recite the alphabet.
- A writing system in which letters represent phonemes. (Contrast e.g. logography, a writing system in which each character represents a word, and syllabary, in which each character represents a syllable.)
- (computer science) A typically finite set of distinguishable symbols.
- Let be a regular language over the alphabet .
- (India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia) An individual letter of an alphabet; an alphabetic character.
- 2002, Eugene E. Dike, African myth of creation in African form of writing, Monsenstein und Vannerdat, →ISBN, page 30:
- We realize the fact that the alphabet A has been used in many world scripts as a vowel with the others AEIOU.
- 2005, Satinder Bal Gupta, Comprehensive Discrete Mathematics & Structures, Laxmi Publications, page 237:
- There are 26 alphabets in English.
- The simplest rudiments; elements.
- 1828, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “The Constitutional History of England: From the Accession of Henry VII, to the Death of George II, by Henry Hallam”, in The Edinburgh Review, volume 18:
- The very alphabet of our law.
- (Internet slang, politics) An agent of the FBI, the CIA, or another such government agency.
Synonyms
[edit]Hypernyms
[edit]- (linguistics): signary
Derived terms
[edit]Expressions with language/script names
Expressions with other terms
- alphabet agency
- alphabet block
- alphabet book
- alphabet boy
- alphabet brick
- alphabet mafia
- alphabet of desire
- alphabet soup
- Euclidean alphabet
- finger alphabet
- Fraser alphabet (synonym of Fraser script)
- hand alphabet
- ICAO spelling alph.
- Int’l Phonetic Alph.
- manual alphabet
- mixed alphabet
- movable alphabet
- moveable alphabet
- NATO phonetic alph.
- phonetic alphabet
- phonetic spelling al.
- radio alphabet
- Raguileo alphabet
- Shavian alphabet
- spelling alphabet
- telephone alphabet
- Theban alphabet
- voice procedure alphabet
- weighted alphabet
- word-spelling alphabet
- Zhuyin alphabet
Related terms
[edit]- alphabetary (obsolete)
- alphabetician
- analphabet
Translations
[edit]an ordered set of letters used in a language
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See also
[edit]- Appendix:Hebrew alphabet
- Appendix:Macedonian alphabet
- Appendix:Swedish spelling alphabet
- Category:Alphabets
Verb
[edit]alphabet (third-person singular simple present alphabets, present participle alphabeting, simple past and past participle alphabeted)
Synonyms
[edit]Further reading
[edit]French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Borrowed from Late Latin alphabētum, from Ancient Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphábētos), from ἄλφα (álpha) (Α,α) and βῆτα (bêta) (Β,β) (the first two letters of the Greek alphabet), from Phoenician aleph 𐤀 (ʾ, “ox”) and beth 𐤁 (b, “house”), so called because they were pictograms of those objects, having developed from the Egyptian hieroglyphs
(𓃾) and
(𓉐).
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Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]alphabet m (plural alphabets)
- alphabet (set of letters considered as a group)
Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- “alphabet”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Middle French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Late Latin alphabētum, from Ancient Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphábētos), from ἄλφα (álpha) (Α,α) and βῆτα (bêta) (Β,β) (the first two letters of the Greek alphabet), from Phoenician aleph 𐤀 (ʾ, “ox”) and beth 𐤁 (b, “house”), so called because they were pictograms of those objects, having developed from the Egyptian hieroglyphs
(𓃾) and
(𓉐).
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Noun
[edit]alphabet m (plural alphabets)
- alphabet (set of letters considered as a group)
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Late Latin
- English terms derived from Ancient Greek
- English terms derived from Phoenician
- English doublets
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- en:Computer science
- Indian English
- Hong Kong English
- Singapore English
- Malaysian English
- English terms with quotations
- English internet slang
- en:Politics
- English verbs
- English terms with rare senses
- en:Alphabets
- en:Orthography
- en:Law enforcement
- French terms borrowed from Late Latin
- French terms derived from Late Latin
- French terms derived from Ancient Greek
- French terms derived from Phoenician
- French 3-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:French/ɛ
- French terms with homophones
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French masculine nouns
- Middle French terms inherited from Late Latin
- Middle French terms derived from Late Latin
- Middle French terms derived from Ancient Greek
- Middle French terms derived from Phoenician
- Middle French lemmas
- Middle French nouns
- Middle French masculine nouns
- Middle French countable nouns