Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A picture representing a word, phrase, or idea, especially one used in early writing systems.
  • noun A pictorial representation of numerical data or relationships, especially a graph, but having each value represented by a proportional number of pictures.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A pictorial symbol or sign, or a record or writing composed of such pictorial signs: as, the pictographs of the North American Indians.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A picture or hieroglyph representing and expressing an idea.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a picture that represents a word or an idea; a hieroglyph
  • noun a graphic character
  • noun a graph that represents numerical data using pictures.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a graphic character used in picture writing

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin pictus, past participle of pingere, to paint; see peig- in Indo-European roots + –graph.]

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