You searched for: “alphabets”
alphabet (s) (noun), alphabets (pl)
1. A set of letters, usually listed in a fixed order, used in writing a language and representing its basic speech sounds, such as the Cyrillic alphabet: In school, Lynn learned that the Greek alphabet had only twenty-four letters.

An alphabet is a set of symbols representing units used in communication, especially speech sounds or words.

Word History

Just as English-speaking people refer to their A B C's, using the first three letters to mean the complete list, as a whole, so the Greeks used alpha and beta, their names for "a" and "b", the first two letters. The combination of these two, alpha + beta, is the origin of the English word alphabet.

—From Picturesque Word Origins; published by G & C. Merriam Company;
Springfield, Massachusetts; 1933; page 14.
This entry is located in the following units: alpha; A, α + (page 2) beta; B, β + (page 1)
Word Entries containing the term: “alphabets”
manual alphabet (s) (noun), manual alphabets (pl)
A system which is used for communicating with each other by hearing-impaired, or deaf, people: The manual alphabet is a procedure in which finger positions represent the letters of a language which is being shown to those who can not hear spoken words.
This entry is located in the following unit: manu-, man-, mani-, mandat-, manda- (page 5)
phonetic alphabet (s) (noun), phonetic alphabets (pl)
A set of symbols, each representing a distinct speech sound: In her book, Linda read about the phonetic alphabet as a standardized set of characters or signs used in phonetic transcription.
This entry is located in the following units: alpha; A, α + (page 3) beta; B, β + (page 3) phon-, phono-, -phone, -phonia, -phonic, -phonetic, -phonous, -phonically, -phonetically, -phony + (page 11)