The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ideograph \I*de"o*graph\, n. Same as Ideogram.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 1830s, from comb. form of Greek idea (see idea) + -graph "instrument for recording; something written." Related: Ideographic (1822); ideographical.
Wiktionary
n. An ideogram.
WordNet
n. a graphic character used in ideography [syn: ideogram]
Wikipedia
An ideograph or virtue word is a word frequently used in political discourse that uses an abstract concept to develop support for political positions. Such words are usually terms that do not have a clear definition but are used to give the impression of a clear meaning. An ideograph in rhetoric often exists as a building block or simply one term or short phrase that summarizes the orientation or attitude of an ideology. Such examples notably include < liberty>, < freedom>, < democracy> and < rights>. Rhetorical critics use chevrons or angle brackets (<>) to mark off ideographs.
The term ideograph was coined by rhetorical scholar and critic Michael Calvin McGee (1980) describing the use of particular words and phrases as political language in a way that captures (as well as creates or reinforces) particular ideological positions. McGee sees the ideograph as a way of understanding of how specific, concrete instances of political discourse relate to the more abstract idea of political ideology. Robertson defines ideographs as “political slogans or labels that encapsulate ideology in political discourse.” Meanwhile, Celeste Condit and John Lucaites, influenced by McGee, explain, “Ideographs represent in condensed form the normative, collective commitments of the members of a public, and they typically appear in public argumentation as the necessary motivations or justifications for action performed in the name of the public.” Ideographs are common in advertising and political discourse.
Usage examples of "ideograph".
Most curious were tripods, strong, pikelike legs of golden metal four feet high, holding small circles of the lapis with intaglios of one curious symbol somewhat resembling the ideographs of the Chinese.
On the so-called translator is forced the job of taking unrelated syllables and grouping them into what looks to him to be intelligible words, substituting then such of the Chinese ideographs necessary to pin it down, and then going ahead with the translation, which is a much more difficult job than simple translation.
Chinese ideographs to represent Japanese phonetics, and the Heian courtiers found it obscure and difficult to read.
Most curious were tripods, strong, pikelike legs of golden metal four feet high, holding small circles of the lapis with intaglios of one curious symbol somewhat resembling the ideographs of the Chinese.
It was a fragment of a clay tablet, and it was covered with the same ancient ideographs as the fragments that Ho had been working on for sixteen years, but it was big enough to contain whole paragraphs.
The black wine called Wu-fan is invisible upon a black stone floor, and you cannot possibly see that the pounding hands of the deceased scholar have uncovered a trail of it, and that the trail leads to large invisible ideographs that are traced upon a black stone wall.
Terra wondered about the ideographs and solved them sufficiently to piece together the wonders of the long-dead Martian Civilization.
However, many of the symbols seem to be contextually determined, so that in one place an ideograph will mean one thing, while in another place the meaning is completely unrelated.
Each country's Commission possesses its Archive of the Game, that is, the register of all hitherto examined and accepted symbols and decipherments, whose number long ago by far exceeded the number of the ancient Chinese ideographs.
It looked like nothing he had seen before, and he was an expert on all types of alphabetic writing, ideographs, and pictographs.
The argument had risen over an attempt to classify the Martian script, but it soon reached the stage where Froud found himself passionately asserting the superiority of the ideograph (of which he knew extremely little) while the doctor defended the alphabet.
Each was identified by a set of the universal Delkasu ideographs floating immaterially in midair before the entrance.
Maijstral pressed the proper ideograph on the service plate and asked the room to give him a holograph-mirror, and a perfect three-dimensional image of himself appeared in the middle of the salon.