alphabet

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(Because in Greek alphabet, there is no letter "ş" (= Sh), they were called A-syrians "Asyrians" and after a while this became "Asiryan" and than "Syrian").

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Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun The letters of a language, arranged in the order fixed by custom.
  2. noun A system of characters or symbols representing sounds or things.
  3. noun A set of basic parts or elements: "genetic markers . . . that contain repeated sequences of the DNA alphabet” (Sandra Blakeslee).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (7)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (50)

  • And to cite one instance, when the Mayan Indians were conquered by the Spaniards, they had an imperfect and extremely difficult system of ideographic symbols, and as soon as they learned about the infinitely easier Spanish alphabet from the Spanish priests they dropped their own writing and took to writing Romanized Mayon—as they continue to do to this very day, publishing their own books and newspapers in Maya. —  SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES MAGAZINE
  • The official religion was Orthodox, and the alphabet was a variation on Cyrillic. —  PurchasedforRevenge
  • Website also commented positively about the fact that TRT 6 used standard Kurdish alphabet, including the letters w, q, x, which doesn't exist in Turkish alphabet.
  • For Korean and Japanese there are other various systems … That's basically where you try to keep the pronounciation of your name but you write it in English alphabet. —  reappropriate
  • (Because in Greek alphabet, there is no letter "ş" (= Sh), they were called A-syrians "Asyrians" and after a while this became "Asiryan" and than "Syrian"). —  American Chronicle
 

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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English alphabete, from Latin alphabētum, from Greek alphabētos : alpha, alpha; see alpha + bēta, beta; see beta.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. First in early modern English (earlier expressed by a-b-c, q. v.); = Dutch alfabet = German alphabet = Swedish Danish alfabet = French alphabet = Spanish Portuguese alfabeto, Portuguese also alphabeto, = Italian alfabeto = Russian alfabetŭ = Polish alfabet, etc., from Late Latin alphabetum (earlier alpha et beta), from Greek ἀλφάβητος, from ἀλφα + βῆτα, the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, corresponding to a and b: see alpha and beta. Cf. a-b-c, abecedarian, and futhork.
  2. from alphabet, n.
 

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/ˈælfəbɛt/
by American Heritage

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