specifically: the picture script of the ancient Egyptian priesthood —often used in plural but singular or plural in construction
3
: something that resembles a hieroglyph especially in difficulty of decipherment
Illustration of hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic 2
Did you know?
If hieroglyphic writing is "all Greek to you," you know more about the etymology of hieroglyphic than you might think. That word comes from the Greek hieroglyphikos, which means "sacred carving" (from hieros, meaning "sacred," and glyphein, meaning "to carve"). The ancient Greeks who named hieroglyphic writing reserved that term for the picture writing they found carved in temple walls or on public monuments in Egypt; it was distinguished from writings done in ink on papyrus or other smooth surfaces. But since making their first appearances in English in the 1580s, both the noun hieroglyphics and the adjective hieroglyphic have been extended to apply to the picture writing of various cultures, whether or not those writings were carved or sacred.
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the Web
Adjective
Walls were seen decorated with hieroglyphic inscriptions and images of sacred animals and after-life items used by ancient Egyptians. Samy Magdy, USA TODAY, 24 Mar. 2022 Early adopters are using these hieroglyphic identifiers, called Yats, as URLs. Rachel Wolfe, WSJ, 8 Feb. 2022 No flip-wrist band with hieroglyphic shorthand for who all must make this spring football thing work. Roy S. Johnson | Rjohnson@al.com, al, 18 Feb. 2022 During the Classic Period, which spanned roughly 250 to 900 C.E., Maya people wrote books on paper with hieroglyphic writing and developed calendars and mathematical and astronomical systems. Livia Gershon, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Oct. 2021 Pieces had broken off, not just from its hieroglyphic text but from the Demotic and Greek texts as well.The New Yorker, 22 Nov. 2021 Trottinettes—those narrow, elegant scooters—glide among the lanes, their drivers perfectly erect, one foot behind the other, like hieroglyphic Egyptian figures. Roxana Robinson, The New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2021 Artifacts recovered from the rectangular graves include silver rings, funerary vessels and a seal bearing a hieroglyphic inscription. Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Apr. 2021 When scholars initially discovered the El Palmar structure, archaeologists had just found a few other hieroglyphic staircases at Maya archaeological sites. Isis Davis-marks, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Mar. 2021
Noun
The farmers, truckers and others who traverse these rural roads, though, could quickly tell you what the hieroglyphics mean: Help. Patricia Cohen, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2020 The board lacks the hieroglyphics symbolizing the soul, but square 27—which in earlier boards featured a simple X—now carries a hieroglyphic symbol for water. Colin Barras, Science | AAAS, 6 Feb. 2020 Earlier game boards boast completely blank playing squares, but in most later versions, the final five squares feature hieroglyphics denoting special playing circumstances. Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Feb. 2020 Early in the meditative travel drama Luxor, a woman crumples in front of a colossal stone wall carved with Egyptian hieroglyphics. Inkoo Kang, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Feb. 2020 Although the game fell out of popularity, the history of senet remains embedded in hieroglyphics and ancient artifacts—and with humanity itself. Daisy Hernandez, Popular Mechanics, 11 Feb. 2020 Yet even unreadable texts—cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, glyphs—declare (even before they are decoded) the solid existence of the past. Helen Vendler, Harper's magazine, 20 Jan. 2020 Step 7: Realize there are no written words in the instructions, only drawings that look like indecipherable hieroglyphics. Sally Schwartz Higginson, chicagotribune.com, 17 Oct. 2019 In 1960, Dows Dunham, a curator at the MFA Boston, translated the hieroglyphics on the coffin and discovered the corpse’s name: Padihershef.Washington Post, 9 Oct. 2019 See More
Word History
Etymology
Adjective
Middle French hieroglyphique, from Late Latin hieroglyphicus, from Greek hieroglyphikos, from hieros + glyphein to carve — more at cleave