Rosetta stone
noun
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The word hieroglyphics refers to an Egyptian writing system that was unintelligible to later civilizations until an inscribed stone about the size of a coffee table was discovered over 200 years ago in an Egyptian town called Rosetta ("Rashid" in Arabic). The Rosetta stone, as it came to be called, held a key to the ancient writing system. Probably written by Egyptian priests in the 2nd century B.C., its hieroglyphic text repeated a text written in familiar Greek. As a result, Egyptologists were able to decipher the symbols. Today we also use "Rosetta stone" figuratively, as we have since the early 20th century, for other things that provide clues or help us to understand something that would otherwise be undecipherable.
Examples of Rosetta stone in a Sentence
Judith Thurman, New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2025
While imprisoned in Rouen, France, Weil developed one of the most ambitious programs in mathematics, which experts are still working on today: a kind of Rosetta stone connecting seemingly disparate fields (number theory, algebra and geometry).
—Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 20 Aug. 2025
So the writer and director of Superman, the latest big-screen adventure to feature the the Rosetta stone of superheroes, quickly dispenses with narrative redundancies.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 8 July 2025
The lists became the project's Rosetta stone, providing names and regiments of more than 60 soldiers.
—CBS News, 4 June 2025
The most famous decipherment ever, that of Egyptian hieroglyphs, required the discovery of the Rosetta stone, which contained near-identical texts written in ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek.
—Sam Kean, The Atlantic, 26 May 2025
The findings resulted in what was effectively a frozen Rosetta stone, allowing scientists to understand in detail the climate over the past 100,000 years and beyond.
—Katie Hunt, CNN, 15 Mar. 2025
Nevertheless, the Super Bowl is but one game and not the NFL’s Rosetta stone.
—Tim Graham, The Athletic, 14 Feb. 2025
These three settings are connected by a web of analogies commonly called mathematics’ Rosetta stone.
—Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, 19 July 2024
Cite this Entry
“Rosetta stone.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Rosetta%20stone. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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Rosetta stone
noun
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