noun ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A table or list of syllabic letters or syllables.
2. 2
   a writing system whose characters represent syllables wordnet
3. 3
   A writing system where each character represents a complete syllable.

   "It shouldn't be hard to come up with a musical syllabary in which pitches code for vowels and timbres code for consonants."

Synonyms

All synonyms

alphabetalphabeticsartblueprintcharacteringcharacterization

Example

More examples

"Technically hiragana is a syllabary, not an alphabet."

Etymology

From New Latin syllabārium, from syllaba.

Related phrases

Cypriot syllabarywriting system

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