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 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
- 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.