ideogramn.

1838 E. Hincks in Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. July 106/2 Nor was Dr. Young less successful with the hieroglyphic ideograms (or symbolic characters direct and indirect), many of which he determined.

1889 J. Winsor Narr. & Crit. Hist. Amer. I. iii. 156 It took systematic endeavors on the part of the priests to settle grammatical principles and determine phonetic values, and the measure of their success was seen in the speedy way in which the interpretation of the old idiograms was forgotten.

1893 S. Laing Human Origins 68 The idea of beauty being conveyed by an ideogram meaning ‘a large sheep’.

1940 E. Pound Let. 16 Jan. (1971) 333 Early characters were pictures, squared for aesthetic reasons. But I think in a well-brushed ideogram the sun is seen to be rising.

1972 Times 29 June 16/3 Traditional graphic symbols and ideograms..were used extensively by the Manding.

2002 S. Franklin Writing, Soc. & Culture in Early Rus ii. vi. 246 Instead, these graphic formulae in effect cease to function as alphabetic script and turn into ideograms.

1897 W. E. Roth Ethnol. Stud. N.-W.-Central Queensland Aborigines iv. 72 With regard to the bandicoot, the long nose is evidently its strong point in more senses than one, if we are to judge by the comparatively large number of ideagrams devised to represent this particular organ.

1951 H. Kenner Poetry E. Pound 89 The Anglo-Saxon scholar's term for just such a vivid figure is ‘kenning’: the particulars by which the person or object in question is known. ‘Whale-road’, ‘soul-bearer’, are both ideogram and metaphor.

1962 W. Nowottny Lang. Poets Use iv. 78 The particulars which inhabit these schemes, though extraordinarily difficult to summate, permit themselves to be assimilated to a common ideogram of decline (of the year, of the day, of a fire).

2003 D. Brown Da Vinci Code (2004) iv. 44 The symbol was known as a crux gemmata—a cross bearing thirteen gems—a Christian ideogram for Christ and His twelve apostles.