Ogham
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A single character in this alphabet.
- 2 Alternative form of Ogham. alt-of, alternative
- 1 An ancient Celtic alphabet historically used to write Primitive Irish.
"The rectangular sandstone rock that Graham Senior had discovered was inscribed in ogham, an alphabet used in the early medieval period primarily for writing in the Irish language."
- 2 Alternative form of Ogham. alt-of, alternative
Example
More examples"The rectangular sandstone rock that Graham Senior had discovered was inscribed in ogham, an alphabet used in the early medieval period primarily for writing in the Irish language."
Etymology
Borrowed from Irish ogham, from Middle Irish ogam, from Proto-Celtic *ogmos (“furrow, path”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂óǵmos. The Irish word is frequently folk-etymologized as og-úaim, referring to ogham being supposedly made by the point of a sharp weapon, but this approach faces serious phonological and morphological problems in that: * The name of ogham and the supposed second element (úaimm (“seam”)?) inflected very differently in Early Irish, "ogham" being an o-stem and the second element being a neuter n-stem. * Middle Irish ogmóir (“skilled in ogham”) should have a vowel in between the g and m because vowels lengthened by compensatory lengthening after consonant loss are usually not syncopated in Early Irish.
Related phrases
More for "ogham"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.