Words & WritingGreek → English
Semiotics
/ˌsiːmiˈɒtɪks/noun
The study of signs and the ways they carry meaning.
The Greek roots
σημεῖον
sēmeîon
sign, mark
σημειωτικός
sēmeiōtikós
reading signs
Literally: “the art of reading signs”
The story of the word
The Greek word belonged to medicine, where σημειωτική was the art of reading symptoms. Locke revived it in 1690 as the third branch of knowledge, the doctrine of signs the mind uses to understand things. Peirce and Saussure turned it into a theory of everything readable, from traffic lights to table manners, while the old medical sense survives in semiology.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
semanticsemaphoreasemicpolysemy
In a sentence
He wrote a thesis on the semiotics of football shirts.