semiologyn.

1641 J. Wilkins Mercury ii. 14 The particular wayes of discoursing were before intimated to be threefold…3. By signes or gestures. According to which variety, there are also different wayes of Secrecy…3. Semæologia.]

1694 P. A. Motteux in tr. F. Rabelais Wks. Pref. p. xcviij These ways of signifying our Thoughts by Gestures, called by the Learned Bishop Wilkins Semæology, are almost of infinite Variety.

1839 Spillan tr. Schill Outl. Pathol. Semeiol. 1 Semeiology constitutes the doctrine of the relations in which the phenomena in the human system stand with respect to the vital state which causes them.

1842 R. Dunglison Med. Lexicon (ed. 3) Semeiology,..Semiology, the branch of pathology, whose object is an acquaintance with the signs of disease.

1876 J. Van Duyn & E. C. Seguin tr. E. L. Wagner Man. Gen. Pathol. 8 The knowledge of these signs constitutes semeiology or symptomatology.

1887 Homœopathic World Nov. 496 At first glance, the semiology suggested cancer.

1916 F. de Saussure Cours de Linguistique Générale iii. 34 On peut donc concevoir une science qui étudie la vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale; elle formerait une partie de la psychologie sociale, et par conséquent de la psychologie générale; nous le nommerons sémiologie (du grec sēmeîon ‘signe’).]

1923 C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards Meaning of Meaning i. 8 The initial recognition of a general science of signs, ‘semiology’, of which linguistic would be a branch, was a very notable attempt in the right direction.

1932 W. L. Graff Lang. & Langs. 72 Semeiology, the science of signs and symbols, is only in its infancy.

1947 Word 3 29 [According to de Saussure] there is a science of semiology, hitherto unrecognized... This semiology is differentiated by definition from semantics.

1959 Times Lit. Suppl. 20 Nov. 669/2 Joyce has become an inexhaustible hunting ground for hermeneutical exegesists to whom semeiology..is a science beside which plain criticism offers no excitements.

1967 Economist 14 Oct. 156/2 The tired businessman who refreshes himself with courses like ‘Structural Linguistics, Semiology and Criticism’.

1972 Times Lit. Suppl. 21 July 833/1 He has written..about literature and about the semiology of the cinema.

1976 T. Eagleton Crit. & Ideol. v. 166 Literature must indeed be re-situated within the field of general cultural production; but each mode of such production demands a semiology of its own.

1973 D. Osmond-Smith tr. G. Bettetini Lang. & Technique of Film i. 3 There exists a certain confusion in the use of terms recently coined by semiologists.

1975 Listener 20 Mar. 367/3 Though the ‘synchronic’ approach of the semiologists is for the moment more fashionable, it is impossible not to be interested in the history of social myths.

1979 Dædalus Summer 111 It has proved much more elusive to disclose the overall intention underlying their visual assembly in any way that an anthropologist or semiologist would recognize as coherent.