ideogram

…became larger, the symbols, called ideographs, grew in number. Modern Chinese, a present-day result of this evolutionary direction of a pictographic writing system, has upwards of 50,000 ideographs.

…meaning may be called an ideogram; if a pictograph stands for an individual word, it is called a logogram (q.v.). Pictographs are also used as memory aids. Various North American Indian tribes used pictographs both as ideograms and as memory aids.

Ideographic text and illustrations were engraved in wooden blocks, inked, and copied on paper. Used to produce books as well as cards, charms, and calendars, block printing spread to Korea and Japan but apparently not to the Islamic or European Christian civilizations. European woodcuts and…

…usually depicted in diagrammatic or ideographic modes as signs, abbreviations, images, and objects of all kinds that indicate a larger context. In this category belong the simplified or abstract forms of objects of nature or other objects and geometrical forms, as well as colours, letters, and numbers. The circle, the…

…by abstraction and by the ideogram, through which the artist de-emphasizes the material aspect to give free rein to ideas and feelings; a sculptured gazelle, for example, may be represented solely by its horns and its neck, or an elephant may be depicted only by the immense fan formed by…

…that some writing systems, so-called ideograms and pictograms, had been invented to express thought directly, bypassing language altogether. The 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz set out to invent the perfect writing system, which would reflect systems of thought directly and thereby be readable by all human beings regardless of their…