Plural of alphabet; multiple systems of letters or characters used to write a language.
Alphabet comes from Greek alpha and beta (the first two letters of the Greek alphabet). The word entered English via Latin and Old French. The Greek letter names themselves came from Phoenician, whose letters had names meaning things like 'ox' (aleph) and 'house' (beth).
The word 'alphabet' literally means 'alpha-beta,' just naming the first two letters, like if we called English writing the 'AB system'—an elegant example of how language sometimes names whole categories from just their first members.
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