alfabetist

Alfabetist is a relatively uncommon variant spelling of alphabetist, a term used to describe a person who studies, describes, or works with alphabets and writing systems. In contemporary English usage, the standard form is alphabetist; alfabetist appears mainly as a historical spelling or in contexts that preserve older orthography.

An alphabetist may be a linguist, a historian of writing, or a typographer who specializes in the design and arrangement of letters within an alphabet. The term denotes expertise related to the components, history, and development of writing systems rather than to broader language aspects such as syntax or semantics. In some cases, authors or editors may use alfabetist as a stylistic or orthographic variant, but it is not widely adopted in modern scholarly writing.

Etymology traces the word to the base noun alphabet, from Late Latin alphabetum and Greek alphabētos (alpha and beta), with the agentive suffix -ist indicating a practitioner or specialist. The sense remains tied to alphabets and their study, rather than to general literacy.

See also: alphabet, writing systems, orthography, typography, linguistics, philology.