senet means an Ancient Egyptian board game, probably played as a strategy game similar to chess or go. It carries an Arena rating of 1357, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, senet ranks #672 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #2,154 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #2,192 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #3,244 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
Why “senet” is a great word
An ancient Egyptian board game of strategy, whose full name means 'game of passing' and which accrued profound symbolic meaning as a metaphor for the soul's journey through the afterlife. Borrowed from Egyptian znt (hieroglyphs: z-n-t, with N24 as a determinative), from the full phrase znt nt ḥꜥb, meaning 'game of passing'; compare Coptic ⲥⲓⲛⲉ (sine, 'passing, afternoon'). Unlike mehen, the coiled serpent game played on a circular track, or chess, a later medieval system of codified war, senet is a rectangular march of counters across thirty squares, a ritualized passage. It is the clatter of astragali dice on a wooden board in the slanting light of a tomb chamber, the worn path of smooth ivory pieces along marked squares, the thirty squares that became a map of the underworld itself—the quiet human attempt to impose rules upon the one journey for which there are none.
Etymology
Borrowed from Egyptian znt — hieroglyphs: z:n-t:N24The full name of the game in Egyptian was znt nt ḥꜥb, which means "game of passing". Compare with Coptic ⲥⲓⲛⲉ (sine, “passing, afternoon”).
noun
- An Ancient Egyptian board game, probably played as a strategy game similar to chess or go.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- shatranj 60% match — A board game, an ancestor of modern chess. vs senet →
- alquerque 51% match — An ancient strategy board game, an ancestor of checkers, thought to have originated in the Middle East. vs senet →
- sugoroku 51% match — A Japanese board game similar to backgammon. vs senet →
- fidchell 49% match — An ancient Celtic board game somewhat resembling chess. vs senet →
- backgammon 49% match — A board game for two players in which each has 15 stones which move between 24 triangular points according to the roll of a pair of dice; the object is to move all of one's pieces around, and bear them off the board. vs senet →
- awari 49% match — An African game of strategy, played by moving seeds on a board. vs senet →
- pyramids 48% match — The game of pyramid pool. vs senet →
- draughts 48% match — A board game for two players in which the players each have a set number of pieces (typically 12 or 20, depending on the rule set), known as men, and the object is to capture each of the opponent's pieces by jumping one's own pieces over the opponent's pieces. vs senet →