alphabet
Pluralalphabets
Pluralalphabets
Formsalphabets, alphabeting, alphabeted
- 1The set of letters used for writing a language.
Most children learn the alphabet before they learn to read.
The Cyrillic alphabet is used to write Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbian.
UsageUsually the alphabet: learn the alphabet, say the alphabet. One symbol in it is a letter.
Similarscript
- 2In linguistics, a writing system whose letters stand for single sounds, strictly one with letters for both consonants and vowels, unlike syllable- or word-based scripts.
An alphabet usually gets by with a few dozen letters, while a script with a sign for every word needs thousands.
Linguists classify Korean Hangul as an alphabet rather than a syllabary, even though its letters are grouped into syllable blocks.
Note
Linguists sort scripts by what a single sign stands for, and this is the sound-level type. A logography gives each word or morpheme its own character and a syllabary gives one to each syllable; an alphabet works below both, at the level of single phonemes. Used this way, alphabet names a kind of writing system rather than the letter set of one language.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Scripts are classified by the linguistic units their signs represent. en.wikipedia.org
- Syllabaries represent syllables with written symbols. en.wikipedia.org
- Alphabetic writing represents individual phonemes rather than whole syllables or words. en.wikipedia.org
- 3In computer science and mathematics, a set of distinguishable symbols, typically finite, from which the strings of a formal language are built.
Every string the automaton accepts uses only symbols from the input alphabet {0, 1}.
DNA sequences are often modeled as strings over a four-letter alphabet of A, C, G, and T.
Note
In formal language theory an alphabet is usually written Σ, and its members are called symbols or letters. A string over Σ is a finite sequence of those symbols; Σ* is the set of all such strings, the empty one included; and a language over Σ is any subset of Σ*. Over is the preposition the field usually uses: a regular language over Σ.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- An alphabet is conventionally denoted by Σ and consists of symbols. john.cs.olemiss.edu
- The elements of an alphabet are also called letters. en.wikipedia.org
- A string over Σ is a finite sequence of symbols from Σ. en.wikipedia.org
- Σ* contains all finite strings over Σ, including the empty string. archive.nptel.ac.in
- Any subset of Σ* is a language over Σ. courses.grainger.illinois.edu
- Over is conventional, but on is also used in formal-language research. arxiv.org
- 4A single letter or character of an alphabet.
Your password must contain at least one alphabet and one number.
Each code has two alphabets followed by four digits.
UsageReaders elsewhere expect letter for one symbol: one letter and one number (not
incorrect: one alphabet).Similarletter
Note
Speakers in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and parts of Africa use alphabet as a count noun for a single letter, so English can be said to have 26 alphabets.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The modern English alphabet has 26 letters. en.wikipedia.org
- 5The simplest, most basic elements of a subject or skill.
Footwork is the very alphabet of boxing, and no good coach skips it.
Her first semester gave her the alphabet of contract law: offer, acceptance, and consideration.
UsageUsually the alphabet of something, often with very: the very alphabet of boxing.
Similarbasics, fundamentals, rudiments, essentials
Note
A figure from the schoolroom: letters are what a learner masters first, so a subject's alphabet is the ground everything else in it is built on. It usually comes as the alphabet of something, often strengthened with very, the pattern of Thomas Babington Macaulay's "the very alphabet of our law" (1828). The plainer words for the same idea are rudiments and elements.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote the words “the very alphabet of our law”. gutenberg.org
- The essay containing the quotation was first published in 1828. gutenberg.org
- Rudiments and elements express the relevant meaning of alphabet. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 6An agent of the FBI, the CIA, or a similar government agency.
Nobody in the group trusted the stranger offering cheap guns, since everyone assumed he was an alphabet setting up an FBI sting.
Half the people in this chat room are alphabets trying to bait someone into posting something stupid.
Note
Online political slang that fits agencies known by strings of letters, such as the FBI and the CIA. It lives in forums and chat rooms, where calling someone an alphabet means suspecting them of working for the government.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Alphabet has an Internet political slang sense referring to an FBI, CIA, or similar government agent. en.wiktionary.org
- Government agencies such as those mentioned are commonly known by initialisms. en.wiktionary.org
- 7To mark items with letters of the alphabet, or to arrange them in alphabetical order.
Similaralphabetize
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
The Greek letter names ἄλφα (álpha) and βῆτα (bêta), the first two in the alphabet, were joined to form Ancient Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphábētos). Latin borrowed this as alphabētum, which became Middle English alphabete. The Greek names themselves came from aleph ("ox") and beth ("house"), Phoenician letters whose shapes began as pictures of those things and go back to Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is a doublet of alfabeto.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 8 facts
- ἄλφα (álpha) and βῆτα (bêta) name the first two Greek letters. en.wiktionary.org
- Ancient Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphábētos) was formed from alpha and beta. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin borrowed the Greek word as alphabētum. en.wikipedia.org
- Middle English alphabete came from Latin alphabētum. en.wiktionary.org
- The Greek letter names derive from Phoenician aleph and beth, meaning ox and house. en.wikipedia.org
- The pictorial forms belonged to earlier ancestors of the Phoenician letters; Phoenician signs were already abstract. metmuseum.org
- The Phoenician letters descended ultimately from Egyptian hieroglyphs. en.wikipedia.org
- Alphabet and alfabeto are doublets. en.wiktionary.org