English

Assyrian tablet bearing cuneiform script.

Alternative forms

• cuniform

Adjective

cuneiform ‎(not comparable)

1. Having the form of a wedge; wedge-shaped, especially with a tapered end.
   • 1936, W. Frank Calderon, Animal Painting and Anatomy, page 297

     The cuneiform tendon is always sharply defined when the hock is flexed by the action of the muscle.

   • 1952, Aileen Fox, Roman Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum): Excavations in the War-damaged Areas, 1945-1947, page 69

     The cuneiform leaf is not the characteristic heart-shaped early form (O. and P., p. 241).

2. Written in the cuneiform writing system.
   • 1911, Alvin Sylvester Zerbe, The Antiquity of Hebrew Writing and Literature, page 182

     There, too, it was originally the vulgar script in contrast with the official cuneiform script employed for all official documents, compacts, etc.

   • 2000, Jöran Friberg, A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts, page ix

     The text is inscribed on a clay tablet of a very unusual format. The only other known mathematical cuneiform text on a clay tablet of a similar format is also the only previously known Kassite (and therefore post-Old-Babylonian) mathematical cuneiform text.

Synonyms

• wedgelike
• wedgy

Translations

Noun

cuneiform ‎(plural cuneiforms)

1. An ancient Mesopotamian writing system, adapted within several language families, originating as pictograms in Sumer around the 30th century BC, evolving into more abstract and characteristic wedge shapes formed by a blunt reed stylus on clay tablets.
2. (anatomy) A wedge-shaped bone, especially a cuneiform bone.

Synonyms

• wedge-writing

Derived terms

• cuneiformist

Translations

See also

• Akkadian, Accadian
• Old Persian
• Ugaritic