Image: Wikimedia Commons

ideogram

Symbol used in a writing system that represents the idea of something (rather than the sounds forming the name)

EntityQ138619

Subclass of: symbol

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

An ideogram or ideograph is a symbol that is used within a given writing system to represent an idea or concept in a given language. Some ideograms are more arbitrary than others: some are only meaningful assuming preexisting familiarity with some convention; others more directly resemble their signifieds. Ideograms that represent physical objects by visually illustrating them are called pictograms.Numerals and mathematical symbols are ideograms, for example ⟨1⟩ 'one', ⟨2⟩ 'two', ⟨+⟩ 'plus', and ⟨=⟩ 'equals'. The ampersand ⟨&⟩ is used in many languages to represent the word and, originally a stylized ligature of the Latin word et. Other typographical examples include ⟨§⟩ 'section', ⟨€⟩ 'euro', ⟨£⟩ 'pound sterling', and ⟨©⟩ 'copyright'.

Overview

All data

25 statements · 16% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Used by: ideographic writing system
Contributing factor of: grapheme nature of statement: sometimes
Different from: ideogram
Ideogram criterion used: Wikimedia disambiguation page
idiogram
logogram
phonogram
pictogram
Partially coincident with: logogram

On other databases

15 identifiers linking ideogram across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

16%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 9, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). ideogram (Q138619). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/ideogram-Q138619