alphabet

[ˈæl.fə.bɛt]

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An alphabet is a set of letters that make up the language we speak.

When you hear someone say "I'm learning the English alphabet," they usually mean they're studying to recognize and write down all 26 letters, from A to Z. But sometimes people use the word "alphabet" more loosely – for example, when talking about their favorite books in alphabetical order or listing people's names in an alphabetical sequence at a party. The key idea is that an alphabet helps us organize and make sense of words by breaking them down into individual letters.

How common is "alphabet"?

Word alphabet is considered uncommon in modern English.
It has a balanced usage among all categories: speech, fiction, newspapers and academic texts.

Definitions

noun

The set of letters used when writing in a language.
Example: In the first year of school, pupils are taught to recite the alphabet.
A writing system in which letters represent phonemes. (Contrast e.g. logography, a writing system in which each character represents a word, and syllabary, in which each character represents a syllable.)
A typically finite set of distinguishable symbols.
Example: Let L be a regular language over the alphabet \Sigma.
An individual letter of an alphabet; an alphabetic character.
The simplest rudiments; elements.