noun
Usage: usually capitalized P
1. : an extinct northern Semitic alphabet used by the Phoenicians of Syria and their Carthaginian colonists from the 13th century B.C. and the immediate ancestor of the Greek alphabet
2. : the ancestor of the alphabets used by the Phoenicians and other contemporary Semitic inhabitants of western Syria that is held to be the earliest system of alphabetic writing
3. : the oldest Hebrew alphabet as distinguished from the square Hebrew or Aramaic alphabet