Iconomatic

//ʌɪkɒnəˈmatɪk// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    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. not-comparable

    "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..."

Example

More examples

"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..."

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”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.