pictograph
(ˈpɪktəgrɑːf, -æ-)
[mod. f. L. pict-us painted + -graph.]
a. A pictorial symbol or sign; a writing or record consisting of pictorial symbols (the most primitive form of records). Also attrib.
| 1851 Schoolcraft Ind. Tribes I. 416 Plate 60 Pictograph A. Chippewa Petition to the President of the United States. 1871 Tylor Prim. Cult. I. 277 We know enough of the Indian pictographs, to guess how a fancy..came into the poor excited creature's mind. 1894 A. J. Evans in Academy 25 Aug. 136/2 Some of them..belonged to that interesting class of pictographs which is rooted in primitive gesture language. 1900 Sayce Babylonians & Assyrians x. 209 In Egypt the hieratic or running-hand of the scribe developed out of the primitive pictographs. 1937 Discovery Aug. 249/1 The Lachish dagger with pictograph inscription. 1955 Bull. Atomic Sci. Mar. 91/2 An Indian pictograph enthusiast..noticed carnotite stain on a cliff face in the Edgemont, S.D., area. 1955 Sci. News Let. 9 July 31/2 The crescent is not a common figure among petroglyphs and pictographs of northern Arizona. 1971 N. Smith Hist. Dams i. 23 In ancient Egypt..the hieroglyph for a ‘province’ is a pictograph of an irrigation system. 1973 Nature 26 Oct. 422/2 He sees close parallels with the Juxtlahuaca Cave paintings, as well as the earlier pictographs at Chalcacingo, and attempts to define the symbolic elements common to all of them. 1978 New York 3 Apr. 32/3 Pictographs from the Warlis, an East Indian tribe. |
b. A pictorial representation of statistical data.
| 1937 R. Modley How to use Pictorial Statistics iii. 19 The chief variation is that the bar chart can indicate the diversity in subject only in its printed legend, while the pictograph expresses the subject by the character of the symbols which make up each ‘bar’. In other words the bar chart is an abstract presentation of facts; the pictograph is concrete. 1954 D. Huff How to lie with Statistics vi. 66 The daddy of the pictorial chart, or pictograph, is the ordinary bar chart. |
Hence pictoˈgraphic a., of, belonging to, or of the nature of, picture-writing; picˈtography, picture-writing; the recording of ideas or events by pictorial symbols.
| 1851 Schoolcraft Ind. Tribes I. 333 Indian Pictography. Ibid., The Pictographic Method of Communicating Ideas by Symbolic and Representative Devices of the North American Indians. 1862 Max Müller Chips (1880) I. xiv. 316 Genuine specimens of American pictography. 1895 [see Eteocretan a. and n.]. 1896 A. J. Evans in Academy 18 July 53/3 A beautiful ‘pictographic’ seal of red cornelian. 1932 [see acrophonic a.]. 1952 G. Sarton Hist. Sci. I. ii. 20 Words containing the same sounds, especially proper names or abstract words, which were not susceptible of pictographic representation. 1971 Nature 30 Apr. 552/1 The signs on these three small baked clay plaques were accepted..as representing a script closely resembling the pictographic writing seen on the ‘protoliterate’ tablets from Uruk in Mesopotamia. |