Ogham

• ogham, ogam

Borrowed from Irish ogham, from Middle Irish ogam, from Proto-Celtic *ogmos (“furrow, path”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂óǵmos.

The Irish word is frequently folk-etymologized as og-úaim, referring to ogham being supposedly made by the point of a sharp weapon, but this approach faces serious phonological and morphological problems in that:^[1]

• The name of ogham and the supposed second element (úaimm (“seam”)?) inflected very differently in Early Irish, "ogham" being an o-stem and the second element being a neuter n-stem.
• Middle Irish ogmóir (“skilled in ogham”) should have a vowel in between the g and m because vowels lengthened by compensatory lengthening after consonant loss are usually not syncopated in Early Irish.

• IPA^(key): /ˈoʊ.əm/
• IPA^(key): (see the usage notes) /ˈɒɡəm/
• Rhymes: -oʊəm

Ogham

1. An ancient Celtic alphabet historically used to write Primitive Irish.
   • 2024 May 8, Dalya Alberge, “Teacher finds stone with ancient ogham writing from Ireland in Coventry garden”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     The rectangular sandstone rock that Graham Senior had discovered was inscribed in ogham, an alphabet used in the early medieval period primarily for writing in the Irish language.

The pronunciation /ˈoʊ.əm/ more closely matches the modern Irish pronunciation of the word ([ˈoːmˠ], [ˈoːəmˠ]), but the pronunciation /ˈɒɡəm/, based on the spelling and the Old Irish pronunciation, is also common in English.

• oghamic

Ogham (plural Oghams)

1. A single character in this alphabet.

• beth luis nion, beth luis fern

• Omagh, go HAM, go ham