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Glite Dictionary
Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

1 3.5
A set of letters used to write the Greek language
  • noun
  • /ɡrik ˈælfəˌbɛt/
translation icon : alfabeto griego
  • The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with a unique sound.
  • letter of the Greek alphabet

It, it is not a letter of the Greek alphabet at all.

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Examples

  • Its origins are found in the 22nd letter, the 14th letter, and an obsolete letter of the Greek alphabet used as numbers.

    Blog text (26)

  • Known to all as... Pi, the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet... which is also used in mathematics to represent the ratio... of any circle's circumference to its diameter.

    Life of Pi (2012)

  • The last letter of the Greek alphabet.

    The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)

  • Even if you use the Greek alphabet and so on, there's still not enough.

  • In university, I started studying Greek, and found that my nearly forgotten invented characters were getting into my Greek alphabet.

    Blog text (11)

  • Although linguistically unrelated to any known tongue, Etruscan, which is written in a modified Greek alphabet, can be read.

    Academic text (2010)

  • Late antique spells commonly transformed the Greek alphabet into an occult language by combining familiar letters into nonsensical arrangements.

    Academic text (2008)

  • At that time, the Etruscans adopted the concept of alphabetic writing from the Phoenicians by way of the Greeks and adapted the Greek alphabet to fit their language.

    Academic text (2010)

  • Less clunky is the Greek alphabet, which definitely has names for each letter that are more than the sounds they represent (i.e., alpha, sigma, phi, omega, etc.).

    Blog text (23)

  • He'd stopped me outside Young House, the English building, snatched off my Derby Days hat, and told me to recite for him—backwards, for crying out loud—the Greek alphabet.

    Fiction book (1991)

Surface Forms

Greek alphabet singular
Greek alphabets plural

Morphology

Greek + alphabet

The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'Greek' (pertaining to Greece) + 'alphabet' (set of letters): together they denote the set of letters used for Greek. This is a literal, cross-linguistically common noun–noun composition that a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily understand.

Etymology

Greek alphabet comes from the names of the first two letters, alpha and beta. The word 'alphabet' was made from those names, so Greek alphabet simply means the whole set of Greek 'letters' used for writing.