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cuneiform (kyoo-NEE-uh-fawrm, KYOO-nee-uh-fawrm) - adj., wedge-shaped. n., an ancient Mesopotamian writing system of logo-syllabic characters composed of wedge-shaped strokes.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
This came up in a dispute over how to pronounce it -- it turns out, we both were right -- and since I'd not run it before, here we are. Indisputable pictographic writing first developed in Uruk and other Sumerian cities around 3300 BCE, and evolved into a logo-syllablic system by c.2900 BCE that became more and more stylized, and by 2600 BCE it was so stylized it could be written quickly by pressing a wedge-shaped stylus into clay tablets (which could be baked and so preserved). This Sumerian system was later adapted to writing Akkadian, Hittite, Old Persian, and other languages. Interestingly, the last dateable cuneiform text was also from Uruk, written in 80 CE. We took the general adjective from Latin in 1677 (from cuneus, wedge) and applied it to the writing system in the 1850s.
---L.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
This came up in a dispute over how to pronounce it -- it turns out, we both were right -- and since I'd not run it before, here we are. Indisputable pictographic writing first developed in Uruk and other Sumerian cities around 3300 BCE, and evolved into a logo-syllablic system by c.2900 BCE that became more and more stylized, and by 2600 BCE it was so stylized it could be written quickly by pressing a wedge-shaped stylus into clay tablets (which could be baked and so preserved). This Sumerian system was later adapted to writing Akkadian, Hittite, Old Persian, and other languages. Interestingly, the last dateable cuneiform text was also from Uruk, written in 80 CE. We took the general adjective from Latin in 1677 (from cuneus, wedge) and applied it to the writing system in the 1850s.
---L.
