Dictionary

iconomatic en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ʌɪkɒnəˈmatɪk/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

A clipping of earlier icononomatic, from a modern combination of Ancient Greek εἰκών (eikṓn, “icon, image, likeness”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”) + -ικός (-ikós, “-ic: forming adjectives”).

Meanings

1. (not-comparable) The use of pictographs to represent their sounds, as in English rebuses using an eye to mean I or in Chinese phonetic transcription of foreign terms into characters.
   • Iconomatic writing... occupies an intermediate position, standing in some sense in relation to both letter and picture writing. 1887 January 22, "Iconomatic Writing", Scientific American, Vol. 56, No. 4, p. 56
   • We have, so far as I am aware, no scientific term to express this manner of phonetic writing, and I propose for it therefore the adjective ikonomatic... 1886, Daniel Garrison Brinton, Essays of an Americanist, pages 207–8:

Forms

Deriveds

iconomatically · iconomaticism · iconomatography