Word of the Day: rebus

rebus (n)

A representation of a word or phrase by pictures or symbols.

"Many ancient writing systems used the Rebus principle to represent abstract words, which otherwise would be hard to be represented by pictograms. An example that illustrates the Rebus principle is the representation of the sentence 'I can see you' by using the pictographs of 'eye—can—sea—ewe.' Some linguists believe that the Chinese developed their writing system according to the rebus principle, and Egyptian hieroglyphs sometimes used a similar system. A famous rebus statue of Ramses II uses three hieroglyphs to compose his name: Horus (as Ra), for Ra; the child, mes; and the sedge plant (stalk held in left hand), su; the name Ra-mes-su is then formed."
--Wikipedia



(Rebus, by the way, is one of the words that the late David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.)