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Glite Dictionary
tetragram

tetragram

1 9.9
A word of four letters
  • noun
  • /ˈtɛtrəˌɡræm/
  • Specialized
: tetragrama
  • The word 'code' is a simple tetragram that consists of four letters.

Examples

  • In linguistics, a tetragram can refer to any four-letter combination in a given language.

  • Many tetragrams are found in different languages, each representing a unique meaning.

  • Tetragram!

    Ghoulies (1985)

Surface Forms

tetragram singular
tetragrams plural

Morphology

tetragram = tetra + gram (semi-transparent) = tetra + gram

The meaning 'four + written/letter' is literal, but both elements are Greek combining forms and somewhat technical, so the composition may not be immediately obvious to an average B1 learner.

Etymology

Tetragram comes from the Greek parts tetra- meaning 'four' and -gram meaning 'letter' or 'written', the same 'gram' you see in telegram. So a tetragram is simply a written group of four letters.