Does the word "alphabet" come from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Beta?

Question

I just thought about the word today. If you put Alpha and Beta together and then take away the 'a' on the end of Beta, it makes the word alphabet. That would make sense if it was true because those are letters in their alphabet and if the Greek were trying to find a name for the list of letters and they just put the first two letters together and got alphabet.

Answer 1

Yes, your hypothesis is correct.

[Origin: 1375–1425; late ME alphabete < LL alphabétum, alter. of Gk alphábétos. See alpha, beta]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/alphabet

So if children say they know they know their "ABC's," their expressing the exact thought of alphabet in modern terms.

If this or another answer here proves helpful in your research, you can encourage good answers by choosing one answer as the "best answer."

Cheers,
Bruce

Answer 2

What accident? you have not represented any comparisons the place 2 issues are created via accident. What you represented is what's referred to as "be conscious coinage" not a accident! The be conscious "alphabet" replaced into from alpha & beta, the 1st & 2d letters of the Greek alphabet, utilising historical Greek pronunciation. In cutting-side Greek, it will be "alphavita". it somewhat is throughout the Romans version of the Greek be conscious, that they used alfabeto, alfabetum, & alfabeta from "alpha+beta", yet they by some potential revert back to the "ph" to make it look "extra Greek", and dropped the suffixes on the tip of the Roman words alfabetum, alfabeta & alfabeto, so the tip result grew to alter into "alphabet" in English. The Romans took the countless Greek letters from Etruscan which borrowed from Greek, and grew to become it right into a gaggle of crap. there is not any C, CH, and so on... in GREEK. The letter C replaced into invented via the Romans via taking the third Greek letter, Gamma, and enhancing it a touch. The G replaced into additionally a Roman invention: including a stroke or 2 to the letter C turns it right into a G.

Answer 3

Yes The english language has a lot of words that derive from other languages

Answer 4

yeah it does