Definitions

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

  • noun A character or symbol representing an idea or a thing without expressing the pronunciation of a particular word or words for it, as in the traffic sign commonly used for “no parking” or “parking prohibited.”
  • noun A graphic symbol, such as &, $, or @.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In phonetics, the visual symbol of a word or phrase that is perceived as a whole and thus constitutes a single idea. Ideograms are distinguished as sensory or motor, according as the word or phrase is seen or written. See ideophone.
  • noun Same as ideograph.

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

  • noun An original, pictorial element of writing; a kind of hieroglyph expressing no sound, but only an idea.
  • noun A symbol used for convenience, or for abbreviation
  • noun A phonetic symbol; a letter.

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

  • noun A symbol which represents the idea of something without indicating the sequence of sounds used to pronounce it. Examples include numerals, many Chinese characters, traffic signs, or graphic symbols such as & and @.

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

  • noun a graphic character that indicates the meaning of a thing without indicating the sounds used to say it

Etymologies

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