ideogram

Meaning without sound

An ideogram is a written symbol that represents a concept or thing directly rather than spelling out a word sound by sound.

Chinese characters are ideograms—the symbol for "tree" pictures a tree rather than encoding the sounds of a word for tree.

Road signs showing curves or falling rocks are ideograms too.

The term overlaps with ideograph.

symbol

hieroglyph

Ancient Egyptian picture-writing symbol

logogramSymbol representing entire word
glyphVisual form of character
sigilMagical or heraldic symbol

emblem · icon · emoji · emoticon · character · sign · petroglyph · kanji · hanzi · rebus

writing

cuneiform

Stylus-impressed ancient script

hieroglyphicsSymbolic picture-based writing
logographicUsing word-symbols, not letters
scriptWritten words for performance

calligraphy · inscription · Sumerian · Egyptian · Mayan glyphs · Blissymbols · typography · character set · transcription

concept

representation

Depiction or likeness

abstractionDistilling to essential qualities
signifierMeaning-bearing form
semioticsStudy of signs, symbols

meaning · symbolism · communication · visual language · universality · concept mapping · semantics · referent · denotation

Categories

symbolssymbols, runes, symbol, asterisks, national symbol
hieroglyphicshieroglyphics, hieroglyphs, hieroglyph, glyph, glyphs
cuneiformcuneiform, cuneiform script, clay tablet, stylus, clay tablets
biovisualizationheatmap, heat map, sequence alignment, karyogram, dendrogram
Logogramslogograms, logogram, logograph, logographs, pictograms
codespassword, binary, DNA, RNA, QR code

Opposites

writing system type

ideogramphonogram

Symbol representing speech sound

letter · phoneme · consonant · vowel · grapheme

symbolic abstraction

ideogrampictograph

Symbol drawn as image

photograph · pictogram · realistic depiction · icon · illustration

Family

ideograms, ideograph, ideographic, ideographs

Familiarity: Top 500,000
Profile: Used worldwide · Timeless · Rated G