noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The act of symbolizing; the use of symbols to represent things, or the investing of things with a symbolic meaning. countable, uncountable
2. 2
   the practice of investing things with symbolic meaning wordnet
3. 3
   The unconscious mental representation of one thing by another. countable, uncountable
4. 4
   something visible that by association or convention represents something else that is invisible wordnet
5. 5
   the use of symbols to convey meaning wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

allegoryblockcipherconversiondefense mechanismemblem

Etymology

From symbol + -ization or symbolize + -ation.

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