I remember someone was discussing the use of the word "icon".  I
believe it is due to C. S. Pierce.

	"[A] Sign may be termed an Icon, an Index, or a Symbol.
	"An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by
virtue of being really affected by that Object.  It is true that
unless there really is such an Object, the Icon does not act as a
sign; but this has nothing to do with its character as a sign.
Anything whatever, be it quality, existent individual, or law, is an
Icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and used as a
sign of it" [Buch 102].
	"If a substantive be wanted [1] an iconic representamen may be termed
a hypoicon.  Any material image, as a painting, is largely
conventional in its mode of representation; but in itself, without
legend or label it may be called a hypoicon.
	"Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of Firstness
of which they partake.  Those which partake of simple qualities, or
First Firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations,
mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous
relations it their own parts, are diagrams; those which represent the
representative character of a representamen by representing a
parallelism in something else, are metaphors.
	"The only way of directly communicating an idea is by means of an
icon;  and every indirect method of communicating an idea must depend
for its establishment upon the use of an icon.  Hence, every assertion
must contain an icon or set of icons, or else must contain signs whose
meaning is only explicable by icons.  The idea which the set of icons
(or the equivalent of a set of icons) contained in an assertion
signifies may be termed the predicate of the assertion." [Buch
104-105]

[1] That is, if there is no real object that is signified by the icon.

Buchler, Justus (Ed.) Philosophical Writings of Pierce. New York:
Dover Publications, Inc. 1955.

--
"In any event, once Robert Craft forged the Stravinsky-Schoenberg axis
in the 1950s and the eclecticism of the 1960s alleviated the austere
serialism of the previous decade, the futures market in Hindemithian
repose was struck by panic selling."
                                  -Glenn Gould