Icon

εἰκών means likeness. It carries heavier institutional history than any other word here: the Byzantine iconoclast controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries were fought over whether an image of the holy is veneration or idolatry, and the question was closed by councils rather than by argument. From there the word passes into English for a devotional panel, then for a person treated as one, and then — through computing — for a small picture standing in for a program. Peirce meanwhile gave it a precise technical sense: an icon signifies by resemblance, as against the index and the symbol. So one Greek word now names a painted saint, a celebrity, a semiotic category and a thing you double-click, and 象 arrived at the same territory from the other end of Eurasia by reconstructing an elephant from its bones.