pictography

American  

[pik-tog-ruh-fee] / pɪkˈtɒg rə fi /

noun

1. the use of pictographs; picture writing.

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Etymology

Origin of pictography

1850–55; pictograph + -y ³; see -graphy

Example Sentences

But as more and more symbols were catalogued�some 700 different ones at last count�scientists realized that they were characters used in pictography, a primitive writing system that uses pictures to convey ideas.

From Time Magazine Archive

For this reason the Chipeway pictography represents him brandishing a rattlesnake, the symbol of the electric flash,168-1 and sometimes they called him the Northwest Wind, which in the region they inhabit usually brings the thunder-storms.

From The Myths of the New World A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America by Brinton, Daniel Garrison

According to John Tanner, the symbol for the lightning in Ojibway pictography was a rattlesnake.

From American Hero-Myths A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent by Brinton, Daniel Garrison

A square figure with interior parallel squares extending to the center is also found, as elsewhere, in cliff-dweller pictography.

From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter

To him the clouds, which chase each other, in brilliant hues and constantly changing forms, in the heavens, constitute a species of wild pictography, which he can interpret.

From The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians by Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe