What is "begriffsschrift"

Begriffsschrift (German for, roughly, "concept-script") is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book.

Begriffsschrift is usually translated as concept writing or concept notation; the full title of the book identifies it as "a formula language, modeled on that of arithmetic, of pure thought." Frege's motivation for developing his formal approach to logic resembled Leibniz's motivation for his calculus ratiocinator (despite that, in his Foreword Frege clearly denies that he reached this aim, and also that his main aim would be constructing an ideal language like Leibniz's, what Frege declares to be quite hard and idealistic, however, not impossible task). Frege went on to employ his logical calculus in his research on the foundations of mathematics, carried out over the next quarter century.