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Glite Dictionary
🪨 An inscribed stone 🗝️ A key to understanding
Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

1 7.0
An ancient carved stone that helped scholars read Egyptian hieroglyphics
  • noun
  • /roʊˈzɛtə stoʊn/
translation icon : Piedra Rosetta
  • The discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 allowed experts to finally decode the long-lost language of ancient Egypt.
  • discovery of the Rosetta Stone
  • Rosetta Stone, discovered
  • found the Rosetta Stone

But if it wasn't for the Rosetta Stone, we would not know how to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Examples

  • The Rosetta Stone was crucial for scholars seeking to understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

  • Focus on one "must see" item, like this: British Museum - Rosetta Stone.

    Blog text (19)

  • The Rosetta Stone, found by French engineers but taken as British war booty, tops his list.

    Academic text (2011)

  • By normal children, I mean the kind that were more excited about seeing me walk into a wall at the Green Park Tube Station and almost pass out than they were about seeing the Rosetta Stone (or anything else for that matter).

    Blog text (19)

  • But if it wasn't for the Rosetta Stone, we would not know how to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics.

    Ear Biscuits

  • Many tourists visit the British Museum to see the famous Rosetta Stone on display.

Surface Forms

Rosetta Stone singular
Rosetta Stones plural

Morphology

Rosetta + Stone

This is a proper-name metaphor deriving from a specific historical artifact (the Rosetta Stone) whose role as a ‘key’ to decipherment must be known to understand the figurative meaning. Knowing the literal words 'Rosetta' and 'stone' does not enable a B1 learner to infer 'key to understanding a complex subject', so the expression is idiomatic and not compositionally predictable.

Etymology

Rosetta Stone is a real ancient stone found in 1799 that had the same message written in three kinds of writing: Egyptian pictures (hieroglyphs), a later Egyptian script, and Greek. Because scholars could compare the three texts, the stone worked like a key that let them finally read and understand Egyptian 'hieroglyphs'.