aleph

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a·leph

(ä′lĕf, -ləf)

The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. See Table at alphabet.

[Hebrew 'ālep, of Phoenician origin; see ʔlp in Semitic roots.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

aleph

(ˈɑːlɪf; Hebrew ˈaːlɛf)

(Letters of the Alphabet (Foreign)) the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet (א) articulated as a glottal stop and transliterated with a superior comma (')

[Hebrew: ox]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

a•leph

(ˈɑ lɪf, ˈɑ lɛf)

n.

the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

[1250–1300; Middle English < Hebrew āleph, akin to eleph ox]

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Noun

aleph - the 1st letter of the Hebrew alphabet

Hebraic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew script - a Semitic alphabet used since the 5th century BC for writing the Hebrew language (and later for writing Yiddish and Ladino)

alphabetic character, letter of the alphabet, letter - the conventional characters of the alphabet used to represent speech; "his grandmother taught him his letters"

Translations

álef

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References in classic literature ?

"And yet," added Ben-Levi, "thou canst not point me out a Philistine-no, not one-from Aleph to Tau-from the wilderness to the battlements who seemeth any bigger than the letter Jod!"

View in context

preposition lamedh) reflects the fact that these alephs "must have

1 i, 3 is a case where the second 'ayin has dissimilated to aleph

shifts to aleph [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in 1Q20 XIV, 11,

The Aramaic of Qumran

I refer to the interplay between the (fictional) Aleph, and the many other "alephs" mentioned throughout the story, a multiplicity which, I suggest, undermines the transcendence of the revelation, undercut by the many allusions to universal poems such as the Divine Comedy, Drayton's topographical poem Polyolbion.

In the Postscript, there are further additions to these famous and infamous verbal imaginings of the universe when a series of visual reflections of alephs are listed.

"El Aleph": a repeating universe

Is it possible that there are transfinite numbers between two alephs, especially between aleph-one and aleph-two?

Although Cantor's alephs no longer worry today's mathematicians, Wapner cites several mathematicians of the past who regarded Cantor's alephs as mystical nonsense.

Hotel Infinity

Add to these aspects the reflections of the space and its occupants, and other fleeting and unpredictable effects (optical distortions, spectral decomposition of light), and the objects seemed, as we observed them, to break off from themselves in order to become, like alephs, figures of the inexhaustible variety of the visible.

Emmanuel Saulnier

The Sounds of Yiddish [non-translatable text] The letter aleph x signals two sounds in Yiddish: the komets aleph [non-translatable text] sounds like o as in gold and the aleph with a pasakh [non-translatable text] sounds like a.