Word: Hieroglyphic

The Word of the Day for Apr 03 is:
hieroglyphic \hye-uh-ruh-GLIH-fik\ adjective
HEAR IT

1 : written in, constituting, or belonging to a system of writing mainly in pictorial characters
2 : inscribed with hieroglyphic
*3 : resembling hieroglyphic in difficulty of decipherment

Example sentence:
Although they're notorious for hieroglyphic handwriting, physicians probably don't write any worse than other professionals.

Did you know?

If Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is "all Greek to you," you know more about the etymology of "hieroglyphic" than you might think. That word comes from the Greek "hieroglyphikos," which means "sacred carving" (from "hieros," meaning "sacred," and "glyphein," meaning "to carve"). The ancient Greeks who named hieroglyphic writing reserved that term for the picture writing they found carved in temple walls or on public monuments in Egypt; it was distinguished from writings done in ink on papyrus or other smooth surfaces. But since making their first appearances in English in the 1580s, both the noun "hieroglyphics" and the adjective "hieroglyphic" have been extended to apply to the picture writing of various cultures, whether or not those writings were carved or sacred.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

My sentence:
The cave of Lascaux in which a plethora of hieroglyphics is housed, was discovered by four French teenagers in 1940.

Comments

[Nichole]

yeah this helped me. I wanted to know what language the word hieroglyphic came from and now i know not olny that it is a greek word but that it means "to carve" in english. Thank you!!