Editing Logogram (section)

{{short description|Grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme}}
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[[File:Minnakht 01.JPG|thumb|Egyptian hieroglyphs, including logograms such as the sun disk (⊙, visible several times here)]]

In a [[written language]], a '''logogram''' (from [[Ancient Greek]] {{transliteration|grc|logos}} 'word', and {{transliteration|grc|gramma}} 'that which is drawn or written'), also '''logograph''' or '''lexigraph''', is a [[written character]] that represents a [[semantic]] component of a language, such as a [[word]] or [[morpheme]]. [[Chinese characters]] as used in [[Written Chinese|Chinese]] as well as other languages are logograms, as are [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]] and characters in [[cuneiform script]]. A [[writing system]] that primarily uses logograms is called a ''logography''. Non-logographic writing systems, such as [[alphabet]]s and [[syllabaries]], are ''phonemic'': their individual symbols represent sounds directly and lack any inherent meaning. However, all known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the [[rebus principle]], and the addition of a phonetic component to pure [[ideographs]] is considered to be a key innovation in enabling the writing system to adequately encode human language.