alphabet

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English alphabete,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Late Latin alphabētum,^{[5][3][6][7][8]} recorded from the late 3rd century, in Tertullian,^[9][8][7] and partly alphabete, also alphabet, recorded in Anglo-Norman from the 14th century.^[9] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphábētos),^{[9][5][6][10]} formed from ἄλφα (álpha) and βῆτα (bêta), the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, taken to stand for the whole.^{[9][5][10][11]} English ABC is formed the same way.^[9][7] Skeat and Weekley trace the Greek letter names to the corresponding Hebrew letters, aleph, ox, and beth, house.^[12][13] Old English words for the alphabet included stæfræw (“row of letters”) and stæfrof (“array of letters”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in an English translation of Higden's Polychronicon (probably before 1425, in a manuscript of before 1475): "y perceyvede not the a. b. c. or alphabete of that chorle".^[2][9][6] The OED takes it as the set of letters in their order;^[9] the MED, the Shorter Oxford and Etymonline read it as learning acquired through reading, a sense found only in late Middle English.^[2][7][8]

Semantic evolution

Weekley found the word first in the 16th century, although alpha and beta both occur in Middle English;^[13] Etymonline dates the ordinary sense to the 1570s,^[8] and the Oxford Dictionary of English the word to the early 16th century.^[14] According to Ayto, purists at first wanted alphabet kept for the Greek letters and ABC, in use since the late 13th century, for the English ones.^[11] From the 1530s the word was extended to an alphabetical poem (about 1531) and an alphabetical index (1552),^[9] and figuratively to a long series (1592, in Nashe) and to the rudiments of a subject (1593).^[9] From 1607 it could be any set of signs or gestures standing for letters,^[9] and printers and writing masters used it for a set of type (1608) and a style of lettering (1658).^[9] Johnson (1755) defined it as the order of the letters.^[15] The verb, "to arrange alphabetically", is recorded from 1671,^[9] and alphabet soup from 1907.^[8] In Hawaii, Hong Kong, India, Southeast Asia and West Africa, English uses alphabet for a single letter, recorded from 1972.^[9] In American prison slang an alphabet is a sentence too long to be expressed in numbers.^[16]

Timeline

• before 1475 – in a translation of Higden, the letters, or learning from reading.^[9][2]
• c. 1531 – an alphabetical poem.^[9]
• 1552 – an alphabetical index or list.^[9]
• 1592 – a long series.^[9]
• 1593 – the rudiments of a subject.^[9]
• 1607 – a set of signs or gestures standing for letters.^[9]
• 1671 – verb, to arrange in alphabetical order.^[9]
• 1907 – alphabet soup.^[8]
• 1972 – regionally, a single letter.^[9]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A set of letters in a fixed order, used to write one or more languages: the Cyrillic alphabet.
2. Any set of symbols or signs standing for letters or sounds, such as a phonetic or manual alphabet.
3. The basic elements or rudiments of a subject.
4. (Hawaii, Hong Kong, India, Southeast Asia and West Africa) A single letter.

Verb

1. (rare) To alphabetize.

Word family

• prealphabet
• Latin alphabet
• Roman alphabet
• international phonetic alphabet
• mixed alphabet
• alphabet soup
• manual alphabet
• phonetic alphabet

Related words

• analphabet
• alpha
• beta
• ABC
• abecedarian
• alphabetical
• alphabetize

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com