Akkadian terms — the language’s own glossary
Every technical term specific to the Akkadian courses, in one plain sentence each. These are the same definitions that appear in a small bubble when you hover a dotted-underlined term anywhere on the site; this page is the place to look one up deliberately. Terms are listed alphabetically.
Terms shared across all of Edubba’s scripts — determinative, logogram, transliteration, and their kin — live in the general glossary; Sumerian-side terms stay with the Sumerian shelf.
- accusative
- the case of the direct object — the noun the action lands on; Old Babylonian marks it with -am: awīlam, "(he accused) a man"
- bound transcription
- the joined-up dictionary form of an Akkadian word (šarrum, awīlum), reconstructed from its syllable-by-syllable transliteration with vowel lengths marked
- consonantal root
- the consonant skeleton at the heart of a Semitic word — n-d-n "give" stays fixed while vowel patterns flex around it: nadānum, iddin, inaddin
- construct state
- the stripped-down form a noun takes to bind with the noun after it — bēl šamê, "lord-of-heaven" — losing its ending to gain an "of"
- durative
- the Akkadian verb shape for what happens or shall happen — inaddin, "he shall pay": the laws pronounce every sentence in it
- imperative
- the naked command form of a verb, no prefix at all — qibīma, "speak!"; šūbilam, "send it!"
- infinitive
- a verb packed whole into a noun — ḫabālum, "to wrong / the wronging" — and, being a noun, it wears the case endings like any other
- mimation
- the -m that closes Old Babylonian noun endings (šarrum, not šarru) — a hallmark of Hammurabi's stage of the language, dropped in later centuries
- nominative
- the case of the subject — the noun the sentence is about; Old Babylonian marks it with -um: šarrum, "the king (does something)"
- perfect
- the Akkadian verb shape for what HAS happened — a -ta- slipped in after the first root consonant: iptaras "he has decided", uḫtappid "he has blinded"; the laws use it for the newest deed in a chain
- preterite
- the Akkadian verb shape for a done deed — iddi, "he charged": simple past, one word, subject included
- stative
- an adjective or noun conjugated like a tiny verb, stating a condition with no verb in sight — nasqā, "(my words) are choice"
- sumerogram
- a Sumerian word-sign kept inside Akkadian text as learned shorthand — written LUGAL, read aloud as Akkadian šarrum, "king"
- syllabogram
- a sign spelling one syllable rather than a whole word — ba, du, an; the workhorse of Akkadian spelling
- verbal stem
- one of the shapes a verb's root can be built into — G the ground stem, D the doubled-middle, Š the causative, N the passive — each with its own preterite and durative
Missing a term that puzzled you? That is worth an issue: GitHub Issues.