Etymology

abjad

A1B3J8A1D2

Today it means: A writing system for Arabic, historically also employed as a numeral system, in which there is one glyph (symbol or letter) for each consonant but vowels are not specified. Full definition →

Arabic أَبْجَد
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The story

  1. Arabic · borrowed fromأَبْجَد
  2. English todayabjad

Borrowed from Arabic أَبْجَد (ʔabjad), the term for the traditional ordering of the Arabic script (from the first four letters: أ (ʔ), ب (b), ج (j), د (d)). Compare English ABC and alphabet. Linguistics sense coined by Peter T. Daniels.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.