icon
(ˈaɪkɒn, ˈaɪkən)
Also ikon, eikon.
[a. late L. īcōn (Pliny), ad. Gr. εἰκών, εἰκον- likeness, image, portrait, semblance, similitude, simile, f. *εἴκ-ειν to be like.]
† 1. a. An image, figure, or representation; a portrait; a picture, ‘cut’, or illustration in a book; esp. applied to the ‘figures’ of animals, plants, etc. in books of Natural History. Obs.
| 1572 J. Bossewell Armorie iii. 23 b, The Icon, or forme of the same birde, I haue caused thus to bee figured. 1611 Speed Hist. Gt. Brit. v. vii. §2. 38 The two first ensuing Icones or Portraitures. 1646 Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. v. xvii. 258 He is set forth in the Icons or Cuts of Martyrs by Cevallerius. 1710 Salmon (title) Botanologia..beautifully adorned with exquisite Icons or Figures of the most considerable Species. 1727 Switzer Pract. Gardiner iii. xxvii. 143 The same that the Herbals have left both the icons and description of. |
b. An image in the solid; a monumental figure; a statue.
| 1577–87 Holinshed Chron. (1807–8) II. 147 The pope ment, by causing such ikons to be erected, to prefer Thomas as a perpetual saint to all posterities. 1638 Sir T. Herbert Trav. (ed. 2) 225 Returne him in pure gold the Icon of an Elephant, Cammell, or Dromedary. 1885 Athenæum 4 Apr. 445 Otto of Brunswick in Hildesheim Church..whose monumental icon is figured here. Ibid., The monumental statues of Queen Eleanor of Castile wear the wimple exactly as this icon of Ingeborg wears it. |
c. Computing. A small symbolic picture of a physical object on a VDU screen, esp. one that represents a particular option and can be selected to exercise that option.
| 1982 Computerworld 29 Sept. 70/2 Star's screen displays black characters on a white background. These are known as icons on the Star and are equivalent to the familiar physical object in an office. 1984 Austral. Micro Computerworld Feb. 13/2 The PCjr is menu-driven, using icons to identify the programs available. 1984 Sounds 1 Dec. 60/4 Once loaded, the program reveals its basic areas and functions. These are set out on the Control Screen as ‘icons’, or symbols that correspond to the five..musical activities that the program will tackle. 1985 Sci. Amer. Sept. 13/2 Unfortunately bitblt in this form cannot use the solid crab icon produced by the pencil exercise described above. |
2. Eastern Ch. A representation of some sacred personage, in painting, bas-relief, or mosaic, itself regarded as sacred, and honoured with a relative worship or adoration.
| 1833 R. Pinkerton Russia 227 Behind them were carried..six censers, and six sacred ikons. 1864 W. T. Greive Servia in Vac. Tour. 428 It is beneath the icon of the Blessed Virgin that women kneel during the office of Churching. 1877 D. M. Wallace Russia iv. 98 Icons are pictorial half-length representations of the Saviour, of the Madonna, or of a saint, executed in archaic Byzantine style, on a yellow or gold ground... Very often the whole picture with the exception of the face and hands of the figure is covered with a metal plaque embossed so as to represent the form of the figure and the drapery. 1879 H. S. Edwards Russians at Home I. 90 The believer is expressly cautioned against such an abuse of the holy eikons. |
† 3. a. Rhet. A simile. Obs.
| 1589 Puttenham Eng. Poesie iii. xix. (Arb.) 250 Icon or Resemblance by imagerie. 1620 Granger Div. Logike 148 Metaphores are contracted similitudes. To which if the note be added, it is called Icon. 1676 Hobbes Iliad To Rdr., The perfection and curiosity of descriptions, which the ancient writers of eloquence call icones, that is images. |
b. Philos. (See quot. 1934.) Also transf.
| a 1914 C. S. Peirce Coll. Papers (1931) I. iii. iii. 195 It has been found that there are three kinds of signs which are all indispensable in all reasoning; the first is the diagrammatic sign or icon, which exhibits a similarity or analogy to the subject of discourse. Ibid. 196 There may be a mere relation of reason between the sign and the thing signified; in that case, the sign is an icon. 1934 Mind XLIII. 497 An icon is a sign which represents its object by virtue of having some character in common with the object: the colour of a colour-card as representing the colour of the object which it resembles is an icon, and a map as representing spatial relations is an icon. 1949 Poetry (Chicago) Jan. 234 Icons, images, which are the aesthetic signs of the poem, analogous to the symbolic signs of scientific discourses; they have, as signs, semantic objects, or refer to objects, and, in addition, as iconic signs, resemble those objects. 1954 W. K. Wimsatt Verbal Icon (1967) p. x, The term icon is used to-day by semeiotic writers to refer to a verbal sign which somehow shares the properties of, or resembles, the objects which it denotes. |
4. A realistic representation or description in writing. Now rare or Obs.
| 1579 E. K. Gloss. Spenser's Sheph. Cal. Feb. 102 This tale of the Oake and the Brere..is very excellente for pleasaunt descriptions, being altogether a certaine Icon or Hypotyposis of disdainfull younkers. 1852 Tait's Mag. XIX. 592 A good book is a perfect icon, a faithful picture and representation of nature and human life. |
5. Comb. icon-stand = iconostasis, q.v.
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▸ A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol, esp. of a culture or movement; a person, institution, etc., considered worthy of admiration or respect. Freq. with modifying word.
| 1952C. S. Holmes in Pacific Spectator Spring 248/2 ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’, the work of a high-spirited young man turning a critical eye upon a national icon, satirically fabulizes the American Mr. Moneybags. 1975 Business Week (Nexis) 12 May 74 A large number of freshmen Congressmen sympathetic to knocking down institutional icons such as the ICC and CAB. 1980 Christian Sci. Monitor (Electronic ed.) 11 Feb. b11 Defining his icons as cultural phenomena, Wolfe devotes a chapter each to the spaceship, the city, the wasteland, the robot, and the monster. 1988 Sci. Amer. Feb. 67/3 Already an icon for young Indian intellectuals, the 32-year-old Ramanujan died on April 26, 1920. 1995 Hispanic Mar. 36/1 An American icon, the pickup truck has evolved from its role as a functional, less-than-glamorous work vehicle, into the sporty, headline-grabbing image of models like the Ford Bronco. 2000 Sunday Mail (Electronic ed.) 2 Jan. Hollywood's female gay icons Jodie Foster, Susan Sarandon and Jamie Lee Curtis. |