Definition of alphabet Alphabet

/æˈlfʌbɛˌt/ - [atlfubet] - al•pha•bet

We found 18 definitions of alphabet from 8 different sources.

What does alphabet mean?

WordNet

Noun Plural: alphabets
alphabet - a character set that includes letters and is used to write a language
		character set an ordered list of characters that are used together in writing or printing
		script a particular orthography or writing system
		armenian alphabet, armenian 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
alphabet - the elementary stages of any subject (usually plural); "he mastered only the rudiments of geometry"
		rudiment, first rudiment, first principle, ABC, ABC's, ABCs
		basic principle, fundamental principle, fundamentals, basics, bedrock principles from which other truths can be derived; "first you must learn the fundamentals"; "let's get down to basics"

= synonym
= antonym
= related word

Wiktionary

alphabet (Noun)
The set of letters used when writing in a language.
alphabet (Noun)
A writing system in which letters represent phonemes.
alphabet (Noun)
A true alphabet , a writing system in which there are letters for the consonant and vowel phonemes.
alphabet (Noun)
A typically finite set of distinguishable symbols.
alphabet (Noun)
An individual letter of an alphabet; an alphabetic character.
alphabet (Noun)
The simplest rudiments; elements.
alphabet (Verb)
To designate by the letters of the alphabet; to arrange alphabetically.

Webster DictionaryWebster's Unabridged Dictionary 📘

alphabet (n.)
The letters of a language arranged in the customary order; the series of letters or signs which form the elements of written language.
alphabet (n.)
The simplest rudiments; elements.
alphabet (v. t.)
To designate by the letters of the alphabet; to arrange alphabetically.

OmegaWiki DictionaryOmegaWiki Dictionary Ω

alphabet
A complete standardized set of letters each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language.

Chambers DictionaryChamber's 20th Century Dictionary 📕

alphabet
al′fa-bet, n. the letters of a language arranged in the usual order.—n. Alphabetā′rian, one learning his alphabet, a beginner: a student of alphabets.—adjs. Alphabet′ic, -al, relating to or in the order of an alphabet.—adv. Alphabet′ically.—v.t. Al′phabetise, to arrange alphabetically:—pr.p. al′phabetīsing; pa.p. al′phabetīsed. [Gr. alpha, beta, the first two Greek letters.]

Foolish DictionaryThe Foolish Dictionary 🤡

alphabet
A toy for the children found in books, blocks, pictures and vermicelli soup. Contains 26 letters and only three syllables.

Wikipedia

An alphabet is a writing system, a list of symbols for writing. A symbol in an alphabet is usually called a "letter". In an alphabet, each letter is a symbol for a sound.

The name "alphabet" comes from "Aleph" and "Beth", the first two letters in the Phoenician Alphabet.

The alphabet in this article is the Latin alphabet (or "Roman alphabet"). It was first used in Ancient Rome to write Latin. Today many languages also use the Latin alphabet, and it is the most used alphabet.

Other writing systems.

Other writing systems do not use symbols that mean a sound, but symbols that mean a word or a syllable. In the past such writing systems were used by many cultures, but today they are almost only used by languages people speak in Asia.
computer science
In computer science, an alphabet is a finite set of characters or digits. It is like listing all the letters that can be used to make a word. Each letter is only listed once,

The most common alphabet in computer science is. It is called the binary alphabet. A finite string is a finite sequence of characters from an alphabet. A "binary string" is a string made from the alphabet, for example. An infinite sequence of characters may be constructed from elements of an alphabet as well.

Given an alphabet formula_1, we write formula_2 to denote the set of all finite strings over the alphabet formula_1. Here, the formula_4 denotes the Kleene star operator. We write formula_5 (or occasionally, formula_6 or formula_7) to denote the set of all infinite sequences over the alphabet formula_1.

For example, if we use the binary alphabet, the strings {ε, 0, 1, 00, 01, 10, 11, 000, etc.) would all be in the Kleene closure of the alphabet (where ε represents the empty string)

Alphabets are important in the use of formal languages and automatons. Automatons such as Deterministic Finite Automatons (DFAs) require an alphabet in the formal definition. All states in a DFA must have a transition on every element in an alphabet.