abugida

[ ah-boo-gee-duh ]

noun

, Linguistics.

1. a system of writing, as in Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Ge'ez, and Devanagari, in which each symbol represents a combination of a fixed consonantal sound and a default vowel sound that can be modified through the use of diacritics or directional changes. abjad ( def ).

Word History and Origins

Origin of abugida¹

First recorded in 1960–65; from Geez ʾabugidā, extracted from ʾa(lf), b(et), g(äml), d(änt), the first four consonants of the Geez script arranged in the order of Semitic writing systems with the first four vowel sounds of Geez in their traditional order ( ä, u, i, a ); later used in an extended sense by U.S. linguist Peter T. Daniels (born 1951) in Fundamentals of Grammatology (1990); abjad ( def )