hieroglyphic
/hʌɪrəˈɡlɪfɪk
/noun (hieroglyphics)
1Writing consisting of hieroglyphs: without the Rosetta Stone, it is likely that Egyptian hieroglyphics would still be a mystery...
- But of course the great intellectual barrier that Champollion had to overcome was this long-held assumption that hieroglyphics were just picture writing.
- Ancient Egyptians developed a pictographic and ideographic writing system known as hieroglyphics.
- Some think that since the Egyptians were such a close, rigid society that they invented the form of writing called hieroglyphics, but that is simply not true.
Synonyms
symbols, signs, ciphers, code;
cryptograms, cryptographs, runes
1.1Enigmatic or incomprehensible symbols or writing: notebooks filled with illegible hieroglyphics...
- I had aced the course in high school, so what were these hieroglyphics that the professor scribbled on the blackboard with such gusto?
- He accessed the file - unreadable junk, nothing but hieroglyphics and squiggles on the screen.
- There was much furtive whispering and glancing in my direction - who is this strange lao wai, with two cameras and writing strange hieroglyphics in his little notebook?
Synonyms
scribble, scrawl, illegible writing, squiggles, jottings, writing, shorthand
adjective
1Of or written in hieroglyphs: hieroglyphic script a hieroglyphic sign...
- Examining texts brought from Egypt, he began to identify a relationship between hieroglyphic and non-hieroglyphic scripts.
- Today, brilliant work by a small band of epigraphers, has resulted in Maya hieroglyphic texts - once dismissed as indecipherable - becoming understood well enough to yield some narrative history.
- Then, in 1799 near the town of Rosetta, a French explorer found a 2,000-year-old stone slab that had extensive hieroglyphic inscriptions and a perfect Greek translation beneath it.
1.1Of the nature of a hieroglyph; symbolic or enigmatic.In the late 1930s and early '40s, Loren MacIver developed a sweet, playful style that superimposed linear, symbolic and hieroglyphic forms on soft, pale washes of color....
- Frosted light from lanterns, images of dragons, porcelain figurines, and banners with hieroglyphic messages, enhanced the decor of the restaurant, while soft and relaxing music played gently in the background.
- Like the indigenous tribes of Latin America or Africa I was using art as a hieroglyphic language, a language capable of transcending all the borders and cultural differences.
Synonyms
symbolic, stylized, figurative, emblematic
Derivatives
hieroglyphical
/ adjective ...- Phase's work became ever more complex and grew further and further away from its original simple signature towards a hieroglyphical calligraphic abstraction.
- The learned adhere closely to their hieroglyphical writing, representing every word by its corresponding picture.
- It has been said that of the component elements of his hieroglyphical name, Isis is the first, and that the name Osiris really signifies the ‘Eye of Isis.’
hieroglyphically
- They documented the Nile's central role hieroglyphically on many monuments and tomb murals, symbolizing it in the form of a grape vine.
- Rameses the Second got that pact engraved hieroglyphically on the walls of the Temple of Karnack.
- At Luxor, Amun's wife, Mut, was hieroglyphically depicted as a vulturess or as a human with a vulture head.
Origin
Late 16th century: from French hiéroglyphique, from Greek hierogluphikos, from hieros 'sacred' + gluphē 'carving'.