Daled

Daled, also spelled dalet or daleth, is the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In modern Hebrew, it represents the voiced alveolar plosive /d/. The name dalet is traditionally linked to the word for “door” ( דלת, delet ), reflecting both the letter’s phonetic value and a visual association with a doorway.

Origins and form are traced to the Phoenician dalath, a consonant in the family of Semitic alphabets from which Hebrew derived. The modern square script dalet evolved through the Aramaic and Hebrew traditions. There is no distinct final form for dalet; it appears in its standard form in all positions within a word.

In gematria, dalet has the numeric value of 4. Beyond mere counting, the letter appears in numerous Hebrew words and roots and is integral to the spelling and structure of the language. In academic and liturgical contexts, the letter is sometimes transliterated as daleth or dalet, while “daled” is a common transliteration in more pronunciation-focused texts.

Daled appears in Biblical Hebrew and continues to be used in Modern Hebrew, in everyday writing as well as in religious and scholarly contexts. Its symbolic associations—most notably the doorway image—appear in Jewish thought and mysticism, where the letter is sometimes interpreted as a passage or entry point to different realms of meaning.