Art & MusicGreek → English
Icon
/ˈaɪkɑn/noun
A painted religious image in the Orthodox tradition, a small picture on a screen, or a person treated as a symbol.
The Greek roots
εἰκών
eikṓn
likeness, image
Literally: “likeness”
Follow a root:εἰκών5 words
The story of the word
εἰκών is an ordinary Greek word for a portrait or a statue, anything that resembles something else. The Byzantine empire then tore itself apart in the 8th and 9th centuries over whether such images could be venerated, and the side that lost gave English iconoclast, image-breaker. Computing took the word in the early 1980s for the little pictures on a desktop, restoring the plainest possible sense of the Greek.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1570s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
iconoclasticonographyiconostasisiconic
In a sentence
The icon was repainted twice and the older face shows through in the varnish.
Tap the icon shaped like a gear.