Word.ws English Dictionary

tetragrammaton

tetragrammaton is the alternative letter-case form of Tetragrammaton.

Noun capitalized: Tetragrammaton

Tetragrammaton (plural Tetragrammata or Tetragrammatons)

  1. (Judaism) The word in four Hebrew letters יהוה (in transliteration as YHWH or JHVH) used as the ineffable name of God in the Hebrew Bible, variously rendered as Yahweh or Jehovah.
    • The starting point of this discussion was Origen’s much-debated comment to Psalm 2:2 concerning the Tetragrammaton in “ancient” Hebrew characters. A very approximate terminus a quo for this practice in LXX texts is the first century b. c. e., the date of the Cairo Papyrus Fouad 266, a revision of...1971, Jonathan P. Siegel, “The Employment of Palaeo-Hebrew Characters for the Divine Names at Qumran in the Light of Tannaitic Sources”, in Hebrew Union College Annual, volume 42, page 160
    • The Tetragrammatons are written out in such a way that the names of single letters are inscribed.1982, Judaica Bohemiae, page 103

Forms of tetragrammaton

pluraltetragrammata
pluraltetragrammatons
pluralTetragrammata
pluralTetragrammatons
alternative formtetragrammaton

Origin of tetragrammaton

From Ancient Greek τετραγράμματον (tetragrámmaton, “four-letter word”), neuter gender of τετραγράμματος (tetragrámmatos, “having four letters”), formed from a combining form of τέτταρες (téttares, “four”) and γράμμα (grámma, “letter”).

Words formed from tetragrammaton

Questions about tetragrammaton

What does tetragrammaton mean?
Tetragrammaton means the word in four Hebrew letters יהוה (in transliteration as YHWH or JHVH) used as the ineffable name of God in the Hebrew Bible, variously rendered as Yahweh or Jehovah.
What is tetragrammaton the alternative letter-case form of?
Tetragrammaton is the alternative letter-case form of Tetragrammaton.
What part of speech is tetragrammaton?
Tetragrammaton is a noun.
What is the plural of tetragrammaton?
The plural of tetragrammaton is tetragrammata.

Words near tetragrammaton in the dictionary

  1. tetragonurid
  2. tetragonurids
  3. tetragram
  4. tetragrammata
  5. tetragrammatic
  6. tetragrammaton
  7. Tetragrammatonic
  8. tetragrammatons
  9. tetragramme
  10. tetragrammes
  11. tetragrams

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tetragrammaton (page history and authors); Tetragrammaton (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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Cite this entry: “tetragrammaton.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tetragrammaton. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.