Egyptian terms β the hieroglyphs glossary
Every technical term specific to the Egyptian 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 Edubbaβs scripts β determinative, logogram, rebus, and their kin β live in the general glossary.
- adverbial sentence
- a sentence made of a subject and a where-phrase, no verb at all β Egyptian's sw m s,tβ‘f, "he is in his place"
- biliteral
- a sound-sign spelling a fixed pair of consonants at once
- cartouche
- the rope ring drawn around a royal name in Egyptian writing
- demotic
- the even faster successor of hieratic, used for daily business in later Egypt
- emphatic
- pronounced with extra tension further back in the throat than its plain twin β q versus k, αΈ₯ versus h
- glottal onset
- a light throat-catch at the start of a syllable β the small click before "apple" said carefully
- glottal stop
- a consonant made by briefly closing the throat β the catch in the middle of English "uh-oh"
- hieratic
- the fast cursive everyday form of Egyptian writing, done with brush and ink
- honorific transposition
- writing a king's or god's name first out of respect, even though it is read in its normal grammatical place
- ideogram
- a sign meaning the very thing it depicts β in practice, another name for a logogram
- nominal sentence
- a sentence made of nouns side by side, no verb "to be" at all β Egyptian's mw pw, "it is water"
- ostraca
- flakes of limestone or broken pottery used as cheap writing surfaces β the ancient scratch paper
- pharyngeal
- a consonant squeezed deep in the throat (like Arabic ΚΏayn); English has nothing similar
- phonetic complement
- a sound-sign that repeats part of a neighboring sign's value β spelling belt-and-suspenders, for the reader's safety
- phonogram
- a sign used purely for its sound, whatever it happens to picture
- serekh
- the palace-facade frame around the earliest Egyptian royal names β the cartouche's ancestor
- suffix conjugation
- the Egyptian verb form whose subject is a suffix pronoun on the stem β the grammars' sαΈmβ‘f, "he hears"
- suffix pronoun
- a mini-pronoun glued to the end of a word β "his", "your", "hers" as a single sign
- triliteral
- a sound-sign spelling three consonants at once
- uniliteral
- a sound-sign spelling exactly one consonant
- verbal sentence
- a sentence built on a conjugated verb β in Middle Egyptian the verb comes first, wearing its subject as a suffix: αΈdβ‘f, "he says"
Missing a term that puzzled you? That is worth an issue: GitHub Issues.