Aleph

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, symbolizing a number value of one and often associated with unity and beginnings
2. A character in the Hebrew script that serves as both a letter and a numeral, signifying the concept of oneness in various traditions
3. An element of the Hebrew writing system representing the initial position, often interpreted as symbolizing the origin or the essence of all existence

Etymology: The Hebrew letter began life as a picture. Its name, "álef", means "ox", and the letter's earliest ancestors in the Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician scripts are generally thought to have been drawn as a stylised ox head, with its horns standing out at the top. Phoenician sailors and traders carried the letter across the Mediterranean, and the Greeks adopted it as "alpha", the first letter of their own alphabet, which in turn gave Latin its "A" and English its letter A. English took the Hebrew name itself, so "aleph" is a doublet of "alpha" and "alif", the Arabic letter that shares the same ancestry. The three words are cousins that entered European and Semitic languages by different routes, and the Hebrew form stayed closest to the original name. It is the letter that opens the Hebrew alphabet, and that position is why it became a conventional symbol for beginnings and for the number one.

Synonyms: first letter, alpha