English / Latin · signum
sign
Something that stands for something else, to someone, in some way. Not always a message.
Etymology
Latin signum: mark, token, standard, signal. English kept both the flag and the symptom.1
Semantic range
Looks like (a picture of a pipe). Came from (smoke, a footprint). Was taught (a flag, a red light). A raven, a repeating number: the plate does not decide.2
What the gloss loses
Calling every meaningful event a sign erases the job. A message is only one job, and not the default.
Misuse
Treating a coincidence as a telegram from the universe, without asking how the standing-for is happening.
How does this stand for anything?
Notes
- Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. signum.
- Charles S. Peirce, “What Is a Sign?,” in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, ed. the Peirce Edition Project, vol. 2, 4–10 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
