Ever need a fact or quotation on symbols? Designed for speechwriters, journalists, writers, researchers, students, professors, teachers, historians, academics, scrapbookers, trivia buffs and word lovers, this is the largest book ever created for this single word. It represents a compilation from a variety of sources with a linguistic emphasis on anything relating to the term “symbols,” including non-conventional usage and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities. The entries cover all parts of speech (noun, verb, adverb or adjective usage) as well as use in modern slang, pop culture, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This “data dump” results in many unexpected examples for symbols, since the editorial decision to include or exclude terms is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under “fair use” conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. Proceeds from this book are used to expand the content and coverage of Webster’s Online Dictionary (www.websters-online-dictionary.org).

Familiar Quotations

Symbols

A status symbol is a symbol, not status.–Anonymous

Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.–Anonymous

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.–Ambrose Bierce

Money is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted.–Samuel Butler

As usual I finish the day before the sea, sumptuous this evening beneath the moon, which writes Arab symbols with phosphorescent streaks on the slow swells. There is no end to the sky and the waters. How well they accompany sadness!–Albert Camus

A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.–Joan Didion

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.–Irwin Edman

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.–George Eliot

For lack of a better term, they've labeled me a sex symbol. It's flattering and it should happen to every bald, overweight guy.–Dennis Franz

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.–Jose Ortega Y Gasset

• Preface vii
• Familiar Quotations 1
• Symbols 1
• Symbols – "Mark" 2
• Symbols – "Numbers" 2
• Symbols – "Sign" 3
• Symbols – "Types" 3
• Use in Literature 4
• Symbols 4
• Symbols – "Above" 19
• Symbols – "Ancient" 19
• Symbols – "Beauty" 20
• Symbols – "Being's" 20
• Symbols – "Black" 21
• Symbols – "Body" 21
• Symbols – "Called" 22
• Symbols – "Christ" 23
• Symbols – "Came" 24
• Symbols – "Day" 25
• Symbols – "Death" 26
• Symbols – "Deep" 26
• Symbols – "Different" 27
• Symbols – "Divine" 27
• Symbols – "Earth" 28
• Symbols – "Evil" 29
• Symbols – "Express" 29
• Symbols – "Faith" 30
• Symbols – "Fire" 31
• Symbols – "Force" 31
• Symbols – "Form" 32
• Symbols – "Found" 33
• Symbols – "God's" 34
• Symbols – "Great" 36
• Symbols – "Hand" 38
• Symbols – "Having" 38
• Symbols – "Head" 39
• Symbols – "Heart" 40
• Symbols – "Human" 40
• Symbols – "Ideas" 41
• Symbols – "Imagination" 42
• Symbols – "Large" 43
• Symbols – "Life" 44
• Symbols – "Little" 46
• Symbols – "Lived" 46
• Symbols – "Looks" 47
• Symbols – "Man" 48
• Symbols – "Means" 50
• Symbols – "Memory" 52
• Symbols – "Moderns" 52
• Symbols – "Mysterious" 53
• Symbols – "Named" 53
• Symbols – "Natural" 54
• Symbols – "Object" 55
• Symbols – "Old" 56
• Symbols – "Once" 57
• Symbols – "Orders" 58
• Symbols – "Original" 59
• Symbols – "Passes" 59
• Symbols – "Passionate" 60
• Symbols – "People" 61
• Symbols – "Place" 62
• Symbols – "Power" 63
• Symbols – "Presence" 64
• Symbols – "Present" 64
• Symbols – "Reality" 65
• Symbols – "Reason" 66
• Symbols – "Religions" 66
• Symbols – "Shall" 67
• Symbols – "Sign" 68
• Symbols – "Significance" 70
• Symbols – "Soul" 70
• Symbols – "Sounds" 71
• Symbols – "Special" 72
• Symbols – "Spirituality" 72
• Symbols – "Stands" 73
• Symbols – "Stone" 74
• Symbols – "Story" 75
• Symbols – "Sun" 76
• Symbols – "Things" 76
• Symbols – "Thought" 77
• Symbols – "Thus" 78
• Symbols – "True" 80
• Symbols – "Truth" 80
• Symbols – "White" 81
• Symbols – "Words" 81
• Symbols – "Worked" 83
• Symbols – "World" 83
• Symbols – "Worship" 84
• Nonfiction Usage 86
• Script Usage 86
• Qur'anic Usage 86
• Journalism Usage 87
• Legal Usage 112
• Governmental Usage 119
• Patent Usage 121
• Bibliographic Usage 203
• Encyclopedic Usage 336
• Lexicographic Usage 382
• Index 552