abjad

American  

[ab-jad] / ˈæbˌdʒæd /

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.

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Etymology

Origin of abjad

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.

From The Verge

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

From BBC

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

From Project Gutenberg

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

From Project Gutenberg

The abjad numerical value of this Arabic letter is five, which corresponds to the potential number of intercalary days.

From Project Gutenberg