alphabetical
- 1Following the order in which the letters of the alphabet are arranged.
Guests were seated in alphabetical order by last name.
The index at the back of the book is alphabetical, so any topic is easy to find.
Similaralphabetic
- 2Relating to letters of the alphabet, provided with them, or expressed by means of them.
Historians study how the spread of alphabetical writing changed the way people kept records.
Spreadsheet columns carry alphabetical labels, while the rows are numbered.
Similaralphabetic
Note
An adjective that carries its ending twice: Latin alphabēticus was already an adjective, and English added -al on top, which is why the shorter alphabetic means the same thing. Context separates it from the A-to-Z order meaning: alphabetical writing is made of letters, while an alphabetical list is merely sorted by them.
- 3Ellipsis of alphabetical jigsaw.
Keen solvers look forward to the monthly alphabetical, where every answer has to be placed in the grid without numbered clues.
She spent the whole evening setting an alphabetical for the puzzle club's newsletter.
Note
Crossword people cut the phrase down to its first word, and the adjective becomes a countable noun with a regular plural: Hugh Stephenson, writing in The Guardian in 2015, spoke of publishing two or three alphabeticals a year. The puzzle gives its clues unnumbered, in alphabetical order of their answers, so working out where each answer sits in the grid is part of the solve.
Less common meaning
- 4Literal; keeping to the exact letter of something said or written.
But if an alphabeticall servility must be still urged, it may so fall out,
1644, John Milton, The Doctrine & Discipline of DivorceNote
A word for slavish literalness, as Milton used it: in The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce (1644) he objects when an "alphabeticall servility" is still urged. The image is of a text treated as a string of letters, each one obeyed. The sense has long been obsolete; reach for literal instead, since a modern reader would hear alphabetical only as the A-to-Z meaning.
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Practice
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Origin
From Latin alphabēticus + -al. It can also be read as alphabet + -ical.