ogham
/ˈoʊ.əm/
ogham is the alternative form of Ogham.
Proper noun capitalized: Ogham
Ogham
- The Ogham alphabet, a writing system used to write Irish first attested inscribed on the edge of standing stones from the 4th century AD, with continuous use thereafter.
- The rectangular sandstone rock that Graham Senior had discovered was inscribed in ogham, an alphabet used in the early medieval period primarily for writing in the Irish language.2024 May 8, Dalya Alberge, “Teacher finds stone with ancient ogham writing from Ireland in Coventry garden”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
Noun capitalized: Ogham
Ogham (plural Oghams)
- A single character in this alphabet.
Forms of ogham
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | oghams |
| plural | Oghams |
| Proper noun | |
| alternative form | ogham |
| alternative form | ogam |
Origin of ogham
Borrowed from Irish ogham, from Middle Irish ogam, from Proto-Celtic *ogmos (“furrow, path”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂óǵmos. The Irish word is frequently folk-etymologized as og-úaim, referring to ogham being supposedly made by the point of a sharp weapon, but this approach faces serious phonological and morphological problems in that: * The name of ogham and the supposed second element (úaimm (“seam”)?) inflected very differently in Early Irish, "ogham" being an o-stem and the second element being a neuter n-stem. * Middle Irish ogmóir (“skilled in ogham”) should have a vowel in between the g and m because vowels lengthened by compensatory lengthening after consonant loss are usually not syncopated in Early Irish.
Words formed from ogham
Questions about ogham
- What does ogham mean?
- Ogham means the Ogham alphabet, a writing system used to write Irish first attested inscribed on the edge of standing stones from the 4th century AD, with continuous use thereafter.
- What is ogham the alternative form of?
- Ogham is the alternative form of Ogham.
- What part of speech is ogham?
- Ogham can be a proper noun or a noun.
- How do you pronounce ogham?
- Ogham is pronounced /ˈoʊ.əm/.
Words near ogham in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ogham (page history and authors); Ogham (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Ogham.wav.
Cite this entry: “ogham.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ogham. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.