hieroglyphic
- noun
- /ˌhaɪəroʊˈɡlɪfɪk/
:
garabato
- The note was written in such hieroglyphic script that no one could decipher its meaning.
Examples
-
Blade indicates a design among the various gang-banger tags that looks something like a post-modern hieroglyphic.
Fiction book (1998) -
Taiesha unties and unwraps, then checks carefully for the five strands of her hair she has crisscrossed into her own personal Egyptian hieroglyphic.
Fiction book (1996) -
And they accidentally left behind a book called To Serve Man within their own sort of hieroglyphic kind of text.
-
And they accidentally left behind a book called To Serve Man within their own sort of hieroglyphic kind of text.
-
It was like like there were eye beams with little hieroglyphics, purple eye beams that you could not just you couldn't, you couldn't damage with the sledgehammer or blowtorch.
-
He found the ancient manuscript filled with hieroglyphic symbols that were nearly impossible to read.
-
Her handwriting often resembles hieroglyphic characters, making it hard for others to understand her notes.
Synonyms
4
8.8
Writing that is hard to read or understand
1
3.5
Messy handwriting that is hard to read
How Legible
Surface Forms
Morphology
hieroglyphic = hieroglyph (opaque) = hiero + glyph + ic
The word is built on the historical base 'hieroglyph', but the sense 'illegible writing' is a metaphorical extension that is not predictable from the components for most learners.
Etymology
Hieroglyphic is also used for writing that is hard to read because it looks like strange picture signs. This sense comes from the original idea of carved picture writing, so calling a messy note a 'hieroglyphic' means it looks like picture-writing you cannot understand.