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Alphabet
Definitions
- 1 The set of letters used when writing in a language.
"The Greek alphabet has only twenty-four letters."
- 2 the elementary stages of any subject (usually plural) wordnet
- 3 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.)
- 4 a character set that includes letters and is used to write a language wordnet
- 5 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.); A writing system in which there are letters for the consonant and vowel phonemes. (Contrast e.g. abjad.)
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- 6 Letter. dialectal, nonstandard
"The notes are named with the first seven alphabets."
- 7 A typically finite set of distinguishable symbols.
"Let L be a regular language over the alphabet #92;Sigma."
- 8 An individual letter of an alphabet; an alphabetic character. Hong-Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore
"We realize the fact that the alphabet A has been used in many world scripts as a vowel with the others AEIOU."
- 9 The simplest rudiments; elements.
"The very alphabet of our law."
- 10 An agent of the FBI, the CIA, or another such government agency. Internet
- 1 To designate by the letters of the alphabet; to arrange alphabetically. rare
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.
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.
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