Words & WritingGreek → English
Hieroglyph
/ˈhaɪərəɡlɪf/noun
A character in the Egyptian picture script, or any symbol written as a small image.
The Greek roots
ἱερός
hierós
sacred, holy
γλύφω
glýphō
to carve, hollow out
Literally: “sacred carving”
The story of the word
Greeks reading Egyptian temple walls called the script ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα, sacred carved letters, and they were right on both counts: priests wrote it and stonecutters cut it. English took the adjective first, in the 1580s, and only afterwards shaved a noun off it. The second element survives alone as glyph, and in triglyph, the three-grooved block spaced along a Doric frieze.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 1590s
Same family
glyphtriglyphhierarchyhieratic
In a sentence
Champollion cracked the hieroglyphs by noticing that the ring around a name held sounds, not ideas.
His handwriting had decayed into private hieroglyphs that even he could not read back.