symbol

Pluralsymbols

Formssymbols

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A written character or glyph that represents an idea, concept, or object.

   Like a national flag standing in for an entire country.

   The mathematician introduced a new symbol to represent the unknown value.

   Ancient scripts often combined picture-like symbols into longer words.

   Similarsign, character, glyph

   Note

   Behind every meaning of the word lies Greek súmbolon, "a sign by which one infers something," which reached English through Latin symbolus and French symbole. In this sense the inference is a matter of reading, because a mark stands in for what it means. The usual construction is symbol for, as in "$" is the symbol for dollars, which names the thing the mark represents.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person or thing regarded as the embodiment or leading example of a concept, theme, or other thing.

   The dove became a symbol of peace after the long war.

   To many people, she remains a symbol of quiet courage.

   Similaremblem, embodiment, icon, token

   Note

   Here the thing itself does the representing: an animal, an object or a person, rather than a mark on a page. The preposition usually changes too. A written character is the symbol for something, but an embodiment is the symbol of it: the lion is the symbol of courage, and the lamb of meekness. Reaching for of instead of for keeps this sense apart from the written character.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A kind of sign whose form refers to the same thing regardless of context, denoting its referent by arbitrary convention rather than resemblance; contrasted with icon and index.

   Spoken words count as symbols because nothing in their sound resembles what they name.

   Unlike a picture, a symbol denotes its object by convention alone.

   Note

   Semioticists in the tradition of Peirce sort signs by how they reach their objects. An icon works by resemblance and an index by causal connection, but a symbol works by convention alone. Nothing in the form of a symbol ties it to what it names, and it names the same thing in any context. In linguistics the term is precise, so it is best not used loosely as a synonym for any sign.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   An internal identifier a debugger uses to link parts of a compiled program to the matching names in the source code.

   The debugger could not find the symbol for that function in the build.

   Stripping the symbols from the binary makes it smaller but harder to debug.

   Note

   A programmer's word for the bridge between machine code and human names. Once a program is compiled, its functions and variables become addresses. Symbols, kept in a symbol table, let a debugger show the names the programmer actually wrote. It usually travels in the plural, as in debug symbols or missing symbols, and differs from the written sign or glyph, though both stand in for something else.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A signaling event on a communications channel: a signal that cannot be divided further into smaller units of meaningful information.

   Each symbol on the channel carried two bits of data.

   At higher transmission speeds, the receiver must distinguish symbols arriving microseconds apart.

   Note

   Engineers count transmission in signaling events, and each event is one symbol. Its state can encode one bit or several. The rate of symbols is measured in baud, which is easy to confuse with bits per second. The two figures match only when each symbol carries a single bit. When a symbol carries two, the bit rate is double the baud rate.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A summary or formal statement that sets out the central articles of a religious faith; a creed.

   The bishop required every candidate to recite the symbol before baptism.

   Disputes over a single word in the symbol divided the early church.

   Similarcreed

   Note

   Late Latin already used symbolum for a creed, and theological English kept that meaning. The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds are symbols in this sense, and so are Protestant confessional books such as the Augsburg Confession of Lutheranism. The usage belongs to theology. In general prose a reader will hear the everyday meaning first, so creed or confession is the clearer choice there.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A numerical expression that defines a crystal plane's position relative to the assumed reference axes.

   The crystallographer wrote the symbol for that face as three integers.

   Each face of the crystal has its own symbol describing its tilt.

   Note

   Crystallographers write a plane's orientation as a short set of integers, the Miller indices. These are found by taking the reciprocals of the intercepts the plane makes on the crystal's chosen reference axes. The word usually appears with of: the symbol of a face, or the symbol of a plane. The integers themselves are written together as one compact expression rather than spelled out in words.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To stand as a representation or embodiment of something; to symbolize it.

   In her paintings, doves symbol the hope of a divided nation.

   He chose an open door to symbol new beginnings.

   Similarrepresent, symbolize, embody, signify

   Note

   The noun pressed into service as a verb, a usage Tennyson relies on in Harold (1877): if the Holy Rood bowed, "whether it symbol'd ruin / Or glory, who shall tell?" The spelling of its forms divides by region. American English writes symboled and symboling, while British English doubles the l, writing symbolled and symbolling.

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