Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An alphabetic system of inscribed notches for vowels and lines for consonants used to write Old Irish, chiefly on the edges of memorial stones, from the fifth to the early seventh century.
- noun A character used in this alphabet.
- noun An inscription in the ogham alphabet.
- noun A stone inscribed in the ogham alphabet.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A character belonging to an alphabet of 20 letters used by the ancient Irish and some other Celts in the British islands.
- noun An inscription consisting of such characters.
- noun The system of writing which consisted of such characters.
- noun See the quotation.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A particular kind of writing practiced by the ancient Irish, and found in inscriptions on stones, metals, etc.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- proper noun Alternative form of
Ogham .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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It's fair to say that no sample of written Pictish that we can read has survived, although as we still can't decipher the symbol stones satisfactorily we can't say whether the symbols, and/or the ogham inscriptions that also haven't been deciphered, represent a form of written Pictish, perhaps a limited sub-set of the language used for particular purposes.
Pictish female names Carla 2010
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Even if an ogham rosetta could be discovered, they would still have to try and translate the text back into oral pictish, difficult unless it is accepted that the way to understand it is via p-celtic patterns.
Pictish female names Carla 2010
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The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic).
Ulysses 2003
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Surprisingly easy to navigate despite a seeming rush and jumble of information, it introduces guests to a myriad of stone circles, ogham stones, wedge tombs, passage tombs, and stone rows primarily from Western Europe.
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This embraces a beautiful and perfect round tower, a singularly interesting ruined church commonly called the cathedral, the ruins of a second church beside a holy well, a primitive oratory, a couple of ogham inscribed pillar stones,
Life of St. Declan of Ardmore and Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore Anonymous
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(Woden's last words to Balder are famous); the riding round the pyre; the eulogium; the piling of the barrow, which sometimes took whole days, as the size of many existing grass mounds assure us; the funeral feast, where an immense vat of ale or mead is drunk in honor of the dead; the epitaph, like an ogham, set up on a stone over the barrow.
The Danish History, Books I-IX Grammaticus Saxo
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They might even refer to the ogham wands on which the first words of their tasks and the opening lines of poems were cut; and it is likely that, being new to these things, they would talk of them to a youngster, and, thinking that his wits could be no better than their own, they might have explained to him how ogham was written.
Irish Fairy Tales James Stephens 1916
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This embraces a beautiful and perfect round tower, a singularly interesting ruined church commonly called the cathedral, the ruins of a second church beside a holy well, a primitive oratory, a couple of ogham inscribed pillar stones, &c., &c.
Lives of SS Declan and Mochuda Anonymous 1914
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In the exercise of this they made use of wands of yew, upon which they wrote in a secret character called ogham.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5: Diocese-Fathers of Mercy 1840-1916 1913
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It was eventually superseded by the Roman letters which were introduced by the Church and must have been propagated with all the prestige of the new religion behind them; but isolated ogham inscriptions exist on grave stones erected as late as the year
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent 1840-1916 1913
johnmperry commented on the word ogham
Celtic tree alphabet:
vowels
consonants
July 21, 2008
bilby commented on the word ogham
It's a trinkety kind of day.
December 5, 2008
fbharjo commented on the word ogham
ogmios og-mo- PIE furrow, track
September 25, 2012