Abel

//ˈeɪ.bl̩// name

name ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    The son of Adam and Eve who was killed by his brother Cain.

    "And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him."

  2. 2
    A male given name from Hebrew.
  3. 3
    A surname originating as a patronymic.
  4. 4
    An unincorporated community in Cleburne County, Alabama, United States, named after the biblical Abel.

Synonyms

All synonyms
niels henrik abel

Example

More examples

"The number of errors of fact in Arendt's book are considerably fewer than Abel implies."

Etymology

From Middle English Abel, from Old English Ābel, from Latin Abel, from Ancient Greek Ἅβελ (Hábel), from Biblical Hebrew הֶבֶל (Héḇel, “Abel”), possibly from the homonymous word הֶבֶל (heḇel, “breath, vapor; vanity”) or from Akkadian 𒌉𒍑 (ablu, “son”).

Related phrases

Abel's formulaAbel's identityAbel's impossibility theoremAbel's irreducibility theoremAbel's summation formulaAbel's theoremAbel-Jacobi mapAbel-Jacobi-Liouville identityAbel-Plana formulaAbel-Ruffini theorem

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.