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ALPHABET
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The elementary stages of any subject (usually plural)
Example:
he mastered only the rudiments of geometry
Synonyms:
ABC; ABC's; ABCs; alphabet; first principles; rudiments
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("alphabet" is a kind of...):
basic principle; basics; bedrock; fundamental principle; fundamentals (principles from which other truths can be derived)
Domain usage:
plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A character set that includes letters and is used to write a language
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("alphabet" is a kind of...):
script (a particular orthography or writing system)
character set (an ordered list of characters that are used together in writing or printing)
Meronyms (members of "alphabet"):
alphabetic character; letter; letter of the alphabet (the conventional characters of the alphabet used to represent speech)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "alphabet"):
Armenian; Armenian alphabet (a writing system having an alphabet of 38 letters in which the Armenian language is written)
Latin alphabet; Roman alphabet (the alphabet evolved by the ancient Romans which serves for writing most of the languages of western Europe)
Hebraic alphabet; Hebrew alphabet; Hebrew script (a Semitic alphabet used since the 5th century BC for writing the Hebrew language (and later for writing Yiddish and Ladino))
Greek alphabet (the alphabet used by ancient Greeks)
Cyrillic; Cyrillic alphabet (an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet and used for writing Slavic languages (Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, and some other Slavic languages))
Arabic alphabet (the alphabet of 28 characters derived from Aramaic and used for writing Arabic languages (and borrowed for writing Urdu))
phonetic alphabet; sound alphabet (an alphabet of characters intended to represent specific sounds of speech)
finger alphabet; manual alphabet (an alphabet used by the deaf; letters are represented by finger positions)
Derivation:
alphabetic (relating to or expressed by a writing system that uses an alphabet)
alphabetical (arranged in order according to the alphabet)
alphabetical (relating to or expressed by a writing system that uses an alphabet)
alphabetise; alphabetize (arrange in alphabetical order)
alphabetize (provide with an alphabet)
Context examples:
Betsey, too, a spoiled child, trained up to think the alphabet her greatest enemy, left to be with the servants at her pleasure, and then encouraged to report any evil of them, she was almost as ready to despair of being able to love or assist; and of Susan's temper she had many doubts.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
She likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a microscopic cooking stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to Hannah's eyes, while Demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Emma was pleased with the thought; and producing the box, the table was quickly scattered over with alphabets, which no one seemed so much disposed to employ as their two selves.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet.
(A, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The first message submitted to me was so short that it was impossible for me to do more than to say, with some confidence, that the symbol XXX stood for E. As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it predominates to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect to find it most often.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
To help my memory, I formed all I learned into the English alphabet, and writ the words down, with the translations.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
“It is too much a matter of fact, but here it is. What two letters of the alphabet are there, that express perfection?”
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Besides, I had learnt their alphabet, and could make a shift to explain a sentence here and there; for Glumdalclitch had been my instructor while we were at home, and at leisure hours during our journey.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
