alphabetic

English

Alternative forms

• alphabetick (obsolete)

Etymology

Partly from French alphabétique and partly from its etymon Latin alphabēticus. By surface analysis, alphabet +‎ -ic.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌæl.fəˈbɛt.ɪk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛtɪk

Adjective

alphabetic

1. Of or relating to an alphabet, especially the characters A to Z, both uppercase and lowercase.

   Synonym: alphabetical

   • 1996, Peter T. Daniels, William Bright, The World's Writing Systems, →ISBN, page 26:

     Seycong or his linguistic consultants could use as a model the alphabetic or abugidic scripts of India and Inner Asia […]

Derived terms

• alphabetician
• alphabeticise
• alphabeticity
• alphabeticize
• alphamagic square
• analphabetic
• holoalphabetic
• monoalphabetic
• multialphabetic
• nonalphabetic
• polyalphabetic
• prealphabetic
• unalphabetic

Related terms

• alphabetize
• alphameric
• alphamerical
• alphamerically
• alphanumber
• alphanumeric
• alphanumerical
• alphanumerically
• alphasyllabary
• alphasyllabic
• alphasyllabical
• alphasyllabically

Noun

alphabetic (plural alphabetics)

1. An alphabetic character; a letter of the alphabet.
   • 1960, Peter C. Tosini, Magnetic Drum Directory and Programming System for Codesorting Letter Mail, page 32:

     Upper case alphabetics can be composed of two characters: (1) a shift character; and (2) the desired alphabetic character.

   • 1980, Charles E. Mackenzie, Coded Character Sets: History and Development, page 33:

     The natural sequence of alphabetics is A, B, C, ..., X, Y, Z. For some codes, the binary bit patterns of the alphabetics are in the same relative sequence as the alphabetics.

   • 1987, United States. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acquisition & Logistics) ·, MILSTAMP TACs, page 15:

     Subparagraphs are identified by lower case alphabetics followed by numerics and alphabetics in parentheses and then underlined numerics and alphabetics.

Translations

alphabetical — see alphabetical