°(linguistics) A writing system, similar to a
syllabary, in which there is one
glyph (that is a symbol or letter) for each
consonant or consonantal
phoneme. Some languages that use abjads are
Arabic,
Hebrew,
Persian, and
Urdu. Abjads differ from syllabaries (such as the
Japanese hiragana) in that the
vowel quality of each letter is left unspecified, and must be inferred from context and grammar.