Alphabetizations

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A systematic arrangement of letters used in a language to facilitate organization or sorting of items
2. The process of organizing elements in a sequence based on their initial letters or phonetic sounds
3. An instance of categorizing words or items in a way that employs the conventional order of characters in an alphabet

Etymology: "Alphabetization" is a plain formation rather than a story with a famous coiner: it is built from "alphabetize" plus the suffix "-ation". The core is the Greek "alphábētos", a name formed from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, "álpha" and "bêta", which in turn go back through Phoenician letter names to Semitic words. Medieval Greek and Classical Latin "alphabētum" carried the sense of a complete set of letters in order into Middle English as "alphabete", a word that already named the ordered sequence rather than any single letter. The verb "alphabetize" came into English by way of the Middle French and Late Latin "-iser" and "-izō" endings, which turned a noun into a verb meaning to arrange something in alphabetical order. The suffix "-ation", inherited through Old French from Latin "-ātiō", then turned that verb into a noun naming the act or result of the process. The plural "alphabetizations" simply counts separate instances of this sorting process, so it is most often heard in technical or bibliographic contexts.