Dictionary

siglum en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈsɪɡlə/ (General-American, Received-Pronunciation)
• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈsɪɡləm/ (General-American, Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Late Latin siglum (“abbreviation”), possibly a contracted form of: * sigillum (“figurine, statuette; seal”), from signum (“figure, statue; seal, signet; mark, sign”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut, sever; to cut off”) or *sekʷ- (“to follow”)) + -ulum (diminutive suffix); or * singulum, a singular form of singulus (“apiece; every; single”, adjective), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one; together”). The plural form sigla is a learned borrowing from Late Latin sigla.

Meanings

1. A letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word; specifically, one used in a modern literary work to refer to an early version of a text.
2. (figuratively) A thing which represents something else; a sign, a symbol.
   • [H]e emerged onto a garden terrace where on the soft red sand one could make out the sigla of a summer day: the imprints of a dog's paws, the beaded tracks of a wagtail, the Dunlop stripe left by Tanya's bicycle, […] 1963, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 2, in Michael Scammell, Vladimir Nabokov, transl., The Gift, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson […], →OCLC, page 86:

Forms

Deriveds

siglarian

Hyponyms

chrismon

Translations (5)

de Kürzel (letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word) · mk си́гла (letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word) · de Sigel (letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word) · mk знак (letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word) · fi lyhennysmerkki (letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word)