iconology · noun — the study of icons in art or art history. It carries an Arena rating of 1351, earned across 44 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, iconology ranks #4,987 of 17,188 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #5,711 of 17,130 for Most Ponderous Words, #8,831 of 17,163 for Most Beautiful Words, #9,579 of 17,163 for Most Sublime Words.
iconology is pronounced /aɪkəˈnɒlədʒi/.
Why “iconology” is a great word
ICONOLOGY — [Noun] The scholarly interpretation of the deeper symbolic meaning and cultural significance of images. From Ancient Greek εἰκών (eikṓn, "image, likeness, icon") + -λογία (-logia, "study of"). Unlike iconography, which catalogs visual subjects, or semiotics, which theorizes all signs, iconology is the deep cultural reading of an image's soul. It is deciphering a lily as an argument for purity, reading a skull as a coded treatise on mortality, or interpreting a saint's pose as a theological claim—a discipline that treats every image as a confession of its era, a text waiting to be read in the original, visual language of its time.
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Etymology
From Ancient Greek εἰκών (eikṓn, “icon”) + -logy.
noun
- The study of icons in art or art history.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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