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Ancient North Arabian

Ancient North Arabian adjective: related to the Ancient North Arabian script or language(s).

Adjective

Ancient North Arabian (not comparable)

  1. related to the Ancient North Arabian script or language(s)
    • One of them, a limestone-ostracon found in the debris which covered the remains of a late Roman fortress, is of special significance for Ancient North Arabian palaeography and dialectology.1985, Ernst A. Knauf, “A South Safaitic Alphabet from Khirbet Es-Samrāʾ”, in Levant, volume 17, page 204

Proper noun

Ancient North Arabian

  1. A branch of South Semitic abjads used in northern and central Arabia and southern Syria from the 8th century BCE to the 4th century CE.
    • The tribes of the Syrian Harrah may, of course, ultimately have come from Southern Arabia, or their home may have been near the borders of the South-Arabian empires, and their alphabet is no doubt to be derived largely from the so-called Himyaritic script ; for the history of the ancient...1904, Enno Littmann, Semitic inscriptions, page 115
  2. A hypothetical Central Semitic language, language group or dialects, expressed by these scripts and closely related to Old Arabic.
    • Macdonald (2000:28ff) has grouped the ancient languages in two classes: Ancient North Arabian (ANA) and Ancient South Arabian (ASA). The ANA comprises: Taymanitic, Dadanitic, Dumaitic, Dispersed ONA, Safaitic, Hismaic, Thamudic (B,C,D, and Southern), and Hasaitic.2001, Muhammed A. Nayeem, Origin of Ancient Writing in Arabia and New Scripts from Oman: An Introduction to South Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography, page 40

Synonyms of Ancient North Arabian

Origin of Ancient North Arabian

Attested since 1904. Calque of German Alt-Nord-Arabisch (itself from 1870s), which corresponds to Altnordarabisch in modern orthography

Questions about Ancient North Arabian

What does Ancient North Arabian mean?
Ancient North Arabian means related to the Ancient North Arabian script or language(s).
What part of speech is Ancient North Arabian?
Ancient North Arabian can be an adjective or a proper noun.

Words near Ancient North Arabian in the dictionary

  1. ancient marineresses
  2. ancient monument
  3. ancient monuments
  4. Ancient Near East
  5. ancient Near Eastern
  6. Ancient North Arabian
  7. Ancient of Days
  8. ancient regime
  9. ancient regimes
  10. Ancient Roman
  11. Ancient Romans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Ancient North Arabian (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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