abacus [LME] The abacus that we know today, with rows of wires along which slide beads, is an ancient object used by the Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans and is still found in many parts of the world. The earliest abacus was probably a board covered with sand, on which a clerk could draw figures and then rub them out again, and this was the original meaning in English. The word was borrowed from Latin, but came from Greek abax ‘board, slab, plate’, and probably ultimately from Hebrew ābāq ‘dust’.