Symbol
A common symbol used to represent the female sex is ♀ (Unicode: U+2640 Alt codes: Alt+12), a circle with a small cross underneath. According to Schott, the most established view is that the male and female symbols "are derived from contractions in Greek script of the Greek names of these planets, namely Thouros (Mars) and Phosphoros (Venus). These derivations have been traced by Renkama who illustrated how Greek letters can be transformed into the graphic male and female symbols still recognised today." Thouros was abbreviated by θρ, and Phosphoros by Φκ, which were contracted into the modern symbols.
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Famous quotes containing the word symbol:
“There is that in meI do not know what it isbut I know it is in me ...
I do not know itit is without nameit is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol ...
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or deathit is form, union, planit is eternal lifeit is Happiness.”
—Walt Whitman (18191892)
“In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance.... In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.”
—Thomas Carlyle (17951881)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchants economy is a coarse symbol of the souls economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)