alphabet
The set of letters used when writing in a language.
Example
“The Greek alphabet has only twenty-four letters.”
Other meanings
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.
Related words
- Bengali alphabet
- Lorm alphabet
- Shaw alphabet
- Glagolitic alphabet
- Gothic alphabet
- Greek alphabet
- Latin alphabet
- Proto-Canaanite alphabet
- Roman alphabet
- Morse alphabet
- international phonetic alphabet
Example sentences
Word history
From Ancient Greek "ἀλφάβητος".
Where this comes from
This definition is adapted from “alphabet” on Wiktionary, by its contributors; example sentences are from Tatoeba, credited to their authors above, published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is published under the same licence.