An abecedarian is someone who is learning the alphabet, or more broadly, a beginner just starting to learn any subject. The word comes from the first four letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D.

In its most literal sense, an abecedarian is a young child learning their ABCs for the first time, sounding out letters and discovering that these strange symbols make the words they already know how to speak. But the word has grown to describe anyone at the very beginning of learning something new. A student taking their first piano lesson is an abecedarian pianist. Someone attempting their first recipe is an abecedarian cook.

The word can also describe things arranged in alphabetical order. An abecedarian poem is one where each line starts with successive letters of the alphabet: the first line begins with A, the second with B, and so on. Some ancient religious texts were written as abecedarian acrostics.

Everyone starts as an abecedarian at something. The chess grandmaster was once an abecedarian learning how the pieces move. The surgeon was once an abecedarian medical student. Being an abecedarian is the necessary first step toward mastery.