A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences. All communication (and data processing) is achieved through the use of symbols.
The word symbol derives from the Greek symbolon, meaning “token, watchword” from ; syn “together” and “I throw, put.” The sense evolution in Greek is from “throwing things together” to “contrasting” to “comparing” to “token used in comparisons to determine if something is genuine.” Hence, “outward sign” of something. The meaning “something which stands for something else” was first recorded in 1590, in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene.
Calling a lid keeps being repeated over and over. Is it a symbol? Q said could guide us but we had to organically uncover.
Calling a lid
Lid
LID
Liddle kids?
The study of symbols - language, for example - quickly becomes very deep. AND, humans are the only creatures that can make use of them, as far as I know.
I needed a filler course in college and a class called 'Semantics' looked a perfect fit, AND the text (something about symbols) was only about 35 pages. Yikes! By the end of the semester I was still struggling to finish - and it changed my whole way of thinking - or seeing... something like that. As language it is a study of cosmology, as grasped by the human brain.