abjad

[ab-jad]

noun

Linguistics.

1. a system of writing, as in Hebrew and Arabic scripts, in which each symbol represents a consonantal sound, with few or no vowels being represented in the basic characters.

Word History and Origins

Origin of abjad¹

From Arabic ʾa(lif), b(āʾ), j(īm), d(āl), the first four letters of the Arabic script in its historical order; coined by U.S. linguist Peter T. Daniels (born 1951) in Fundamentals of Grammatology (1990); abugida ( def. )

Example Sentences

Argamon notes that written Hebrew is what’s known as an “abjad,” meaning a script with no vowels.

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Others say it dates from an old way of calculating numbers called "Abjad".

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Shoghi Effendi, The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh.20.According to the abjad reckoning, the letters of “shidád” total 309.

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In the abjad notation the name ‘Muḥammad’ has the same numerical value as ‘Nabíl’.

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The abjad numerical equivalent of "Bahá" is nine.

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