alphabet
part of speech
noun (an alphabet, alphabets; the alphabet)
meaning for a pupil
1) The alphabet is the set of letters used to write a language, put in a fixed order. tree →
2) An alphabet is any such set of letters, like the Greek alphabet. tree →
3) The basics of something are sometimes called its alphabet. tree →
sense in the lessons
In literacy the English alphabet has 26 letters from A to Z: 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and 21 consonants (y can act as both). Alphabetical order is used in dictionaries, registers and indexes. Other alphabets: Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic. Phrases: «alphabet song», «in alphabetical order».
examples
- The English alphabet has 26 letters. tree →
- Can you say the alphabet backwards? tree →
- Put these words in alphabetical order. tree →
- The Greek alphabet starts with alpha and beta. tree →
- Little children sing the alphabet song. tree →
- Z is the last letter of the alphabet. tree →
- Chinese is not written with an alphabet. tree →
- The eighth letter from the end of the alphabet is S, and therefore the snail received the second prize. tree →
note
The word comes from alpha and beta, the first two Greek letters. Adjective: alphabetical. In maths, the alphabet has 26 letters, so the middle is between M (13th) and N (14th). Not all writing systems are alphabets.
In the corpora
- That is why an alphabet is so powerful: English needs only 26 letters, but Chinese writing uses thousands of characters.
- Real life: the alphabet was not made in one day by one family; it grew over about 2,000 years.
- Think of the elements as the letters of an alphabet: about a hundred letters spell out every substance in the world.
- Rome left us roads, laws, the alphabet, the names of months, languages, buildings and the Christian church.
- The English alphabet has 26 letters.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «alphabet» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.