phoenician
part of speech
adjective (Phoenician); noun (a Phoenician, Phoenicians)
meaning for a pupil
1) Belonging to Phoenicia, an ancient land of trading cities (like Tyre, Sidon and Byblos) on the coast of what is now Lebanon, about 1500–300 BC. tree →
2) A person from Phoenicia. tree →
3) The Phoenician alphabet was one of the first alphabets, with letters for sounds; Greek, Latin and our ABC came from it. tree →
sense in the lessons
In the Tanakh and Jewish tradition: The Phoenicians are named as one possible source of ideas, and their alphabet is linked to the Hebrew letters. Interpretation: The tradition holds that the Hebrew letters are God's tools of creation, while scholars point out that the alphabet is related to the Phoenician one. In the primary lessons: In history lessons on how writing began, the Phoenicians were great seafarers and traders who sailed the Mediterranean, founded Carthage and spread their alphabet; they also made a famous purple dye from sea snails. The Just So Stories tell a made-up tale of Taffy inventing letters; the real story goes through Egyptian signs, the Phoenician alphabet and the Greeks to the Romans.
examples
- Various sources such as Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Phoenician, Hebrew, etc., have been advanced as the origin of the Pythagorean philosophy. (Mordell, The Origin of Letters and Numerals according to Sefer Yetzirah (1914)) tree →
- The Phoenicians sailed all over the Mediterranean. tree →
- Our alphabet comes from the Phoenician alphabet. tree →
- Phoenician traders sold purple dye and cedar wood. tree →
- Carthage was a Phoenician city in North Africa. tree →
- The Phoenician letter aleph became the Greek alpha and our A. tree →
- Tyre was a rich Phoenician port. tree →
note
Write with a capital P. Sounds like «fo-NEE-shun» or «fuh-NISH-un». The Phoenician alphabet had only consonants; the Greeks added vowels.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «phoenician» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.