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symbol

noun · verb

Simple meaning

A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

simbuhl

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈsɪmbəl

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.

  2. A thing considered the embodiment or cardinal exemplar of a concept, theme, or other thing.

  3. linguistics

    A type of noun whereby the form refers to the same entity independently of the context; a symbol arbitrarily denotes a referent. See also icon and index.

  4. A summary of a dogmatic statement of faith.

verb

  1. To symbolize.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.

Used this way, symbol is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use symbol

  • “The eagle is a symbol of the United States.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Noun

symbol system

Visible

visible symbol

Numerical

status symbol

Other combinations

symbol tablenational symbolnew symbolreligious symbolpowerful symbol

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • symbolismnounDerived noun

    A system of symbols and symbolic representations.

  • symbolicadjectiveDerived adjective

    Related to A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.

  • symbolicallyadverbDerived adverb

    In a symbolic manner.

  • symbolizeverbDerived verb

    Express indirectly by an image, form, or model.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • symbol-worshipnounCompound term

    The worship of symbols.

  • graphic symbolnounCompound term

    A written symbol that is used to represent speech.

  • written symbolnounCompound term

    A written or printed symbol.

  • mathematical symbolnounCompound term

    A character that is used to indicates a mathematical relation or operation.

  • phonetic symbolnounCompound term

    A written character used in phonetic transcription of represent a particular speech sound.

  • printed symbolnounCompound term

    A written or printed symbol.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: character or glyph representing an idea or concept

symbolization

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.