alphabet
/ˈæl.fəˌbɛt/ noun, verb
Forms alphabets alphabeting alphabeted
- noun The set of letters used when writing in a language. “The Greek alphabet has only twenty-four letters.”
- noun 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.)
- noun A writing system in which there are letters for the consonant and vowel phonemes. (Contrast e.g. abjad.)
- noun (computer science) A typically finite set of distinguishable symbols. “Let L be a regular language over the alphabet #92;Sigma.”
- noun (dialectal, nonstandard, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Africa) An individual letter of an alphabet; an alphabetic character. “The notes are named with the first seven alphabets.”
- noun The simplest rudiments; elements.
- noun (Internet slang, politics) An agent of the FBI, the CIA, or another such government agency.
- verb (rare) To designate by the letters of the alphabet; to arrange alphabetically.
Synonyms
ABC absey alphabetize rudiment first rudiment first principle ABC's ABCs
Etymology
From Middle English alphabete, borrowed from Classical 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 F1 (𓃾) and pr (𓉐).
Doublet of alfabeto. Dipslaced native Old English stæfrǣw (literally "staff-row").
Webster’s 1913
- noun The letters of a language arranged in the customary order; the series of letters or signs which form the elements of written language.
- noun The simplest rudiments; elements.
- verb To designate by the letters of the alphabet; to arrange alphabetically. [R.]
Etymology [L. alphabetum, fr. Gr. aleph and beth: cf. F. alphabet.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “alphabet”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details