Abjads

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A writing system consisting exclusively of consonants where vowel notation is typically omitted or optional; an alphabet variant primarily representing consonantal sounds; an abjad functions by recording the backbone sounds of words without explicit vowels
2. A consonant-based script used in various languages where vowels may be indicated but often left out; a type of writing system focusing on consonant letters to convey lexical meaning; an orthographic form emphasizing consonant characters over vowels in text
3. A form of alphabetic writing that chiefly includes consonants and usually excludes vowels except in specific cases; a script system designed to represent consonantal phonemes distinctly, leaving vowels unmarked or marked by diacritics; a language script relying primarily on consonant signs for word structure representation

Etymology: The word is the plural of "abjad," and the story begins with an alphabet's own ordering system. In Arabic, "abjad" (أَبْجَد) was the traditional name for the sequence of the script's letters, taken from the first four of them: alif (ʔ), ba (b), jim (j), and dal (d). Those opening letters gave their name to the whole ordering, much as English "ABC" names our alphabet by its first three letters. The English term, however, is a modern coinage. The linguistic sense, describing a script that records only consonants, was introduced by the American scholar Peter T. Daniels, who needed a precise name for a category that the older word "alphabet" blurred. Scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Phoenician leave most vowels to the reader's knowledge of the language, and Daniels borrowed the Arabic word to label them.

Synonyms: consonant alphabet, consonantal alphabet

Antonyms: alphabet, abugida, syllabary