The obvious contrast is with syllabaries (syllabary), where there is one symbol per possible syllable, and the signs for each syllable have no systematic graphic similarity.
The name is derived from the first four characters of an order of the Ethiopic script used in some religious contexts (this order seems to correspond to the ancestral semitic character order (alpha, beta, gamma, delta / ABCD / ...). The [Ethiopic script]? is an abugida, although the vowel modifications in Ethiopic are not entirely systematic. Many North American Indian scripts, such as Cree?, are abugidas as well. The largest single group of abugidas is the [Brahmic family]? of scripts, however, which includes nearly all the scripts used in India and South-East Asia.