semiographies

Noun

semiography (usually uncountable, plural semiographies)

1. (usually) A description of the signs of disease.
   • In treating of the semiography of the disease, Dr Hope restores to its place among the rational signs, that of jugular venous pulsation, or turgescence of the jugular veins, with pulsation synchronous with that of the arteries, originally specified by Lancisi, but rejected on insufficient grounds...1832, J. Hope, “A Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart and Great Vessels, comprising a new View of the Physiology of the Heart's Action, according to which the Physical Signs are explaiend”, in The...
2. (usually) A system of symbolic notation, especially (but not always) as opposed to phonetic notation.
   • Masson's semiography, rectifying millennia of scrptorial history, refers us not to origins (what do we care about origins?) but to the body: it imposes upon us not the form (banal proposition of all pointers) but the figure, i.e., the elliptical collision of two signifiers: the gesture beneath...2001, Roland Barthes, “Masson's semiography”, in Jed Rasula, Steve McCaffery, editor, Imagining Language: An Anthology, page 46
3. (usually, more specifically) A system of musical notation.
   • Metallov further assumed that Græco-Syrian semiography came to Russia through Mt. Athos; but as we mentioned earlier, Athos at that time was still relatively young as a monastic state, although it was inhabited by monks of various countries.1980, Johann von Gardner, Vladimir Morosan, Russian Church Singing, page 115
4. (usually) The study of symbolic systems or of a particular symbolic system.
   • Abundant graphic documentation of Frutiger's work, together with the books by Shepherd and Dreyfus, serve as the basis for modern comprehension of the principles of semiography.1996, Semiotic Society of America, Semiotics, page 201