Symbol

==Etymology==
The word ''symbol'' derives from the late Middle French masculine noun ''symbole'', which appeared around 1380 in a theological sense signifying a formula used in the Roman Catholic Church as a sort of synonym for 'the credo'; by extension in the early Renaissance it came to mean 'a maxim' or 'the external sign of a sacrament'; these meanings were lost in secular contexts.  It was during the Renaissance in the mid-16th century that the word took on the meaning that is dominant today, that of 'a natural fact or object evoking by its form or its nature an association of ideas with something abstract or absent'; this appears, for example, in [[François Rabelais]], ''Le Quart Livre'', in 1552.<ref>Alain Rey et al., eds., ''Dictionnaire historique de la langue française'', new edition, vol. 2 (Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1995), p. 2082.</ref> This French word derives from Latin, where both the masculine noun ''symbolus'' and the neuter noun ''symbolum'' refer to "a mark or sign as a means of recognition."<ref>Eric Partridge, ''Origins:  A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'', 2nd ed. (New York:  Macmillan, 1959), p. 688.</ref>  The Latin word derives from the [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] σύμβολον ''symbolon'', from a verb meaning 'throw together, put together, compare,' alluding to the Classical practice of breaking a piece of ceramic in two and giving one half to the person who would receive a future message, and one half to the person who would send it:  when the two fit perfectly together, the receiver could be sure that the messenger bearing it did indeed also carry a genuine message from the intended person.<ref>Alain Rey et al., eds., ''Dictionnaire historique de la langue française'', new edition, vol. 2 (Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1995), p. 2082.</ref>  A literary or artistic symbol as an "outward sign" of something else is a metaphorical extension of this notion of a message from a sender to a recipient. In English, the meaning "something which stands for something else" was first recorded in 1590, in [[Edmund Spenser]]'s ''[[Faerie Queene]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=symbol {{!}} Search |url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=symbol&searchmode=none |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170702162014/http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=symbol&searchmode=none |archive-date=Jul 2, 2017 |website=Online Etymology Dictionary}}</ref>