emblem

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An object or a representation that functions as a symbol. See Synonyms at sign.
2. n. A distinctive badge, design, or device: trucks marked with the company emblem; the emblem of the air force.
3. n. An allegorical picture usually inscribed with a verse or motto presenting a moral lesson.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. That which is put in or on inlaid work; inlay; inlaid or mosaic work; something ornamental inserted in another body.
2. n. A symbolical design or figure with explanatory writing; a design or an image suggesting some truth or fact; the expression of a thought or idea both in design and in words: as, Quarles's Emblems (a collection of such representations).
3. n. Any object whose predominant quality symbolizes something else, as another quality, condition, state, and the like; the figure of such an object used as a symbol; an allusive figure; a symbol: as, a white robe is an emblem of purity; a balance, of justice; a crown, of royalty. The emblems in use during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are sometimes hard to discriminate from the devices; for these, as adopted by men of distinction, were commonly emblematic. See device, 7.
4. n. An example.
5. n. Synonyms and Emblem, Symbol, Type. Emblem and symbol refer to tangible objects; type may refer also to an act, as when the lifting up of the brazen serpent (Num. xxi. 8, 9) is said to be a type of the crucifixion, the serpent being a type or emblem of Christ. A symbol is generally an emblem which has become recognized or standard among men; a volume proposing new signs of this sort would be called a “book of emblems”; but an emblem may be a symbol, as the bread and wine at the Lord's supper are more often called emblems than symbols of Christ's death. Symbol is by this rule the appropriate word for the conventional signs in mathematics. Emblem is most often used of moral and religious matters, and type chiefly of religious doctrines, institutions, historical facts, etc. Type in its religious application generally points forward to an antitype.
6. To represent or suggest by an emblem or symbolically; symbolize; emblematize.

Wiktionary

1. n. A representative symbol, such as a trademark or logo.
2. n. Something which represents a larger whole.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. obsolete Inlay; inlaid or mosaic work; something ornamental inserted in a surface.
2. n. A visible sign of an idea; an object, or the figure of an object, symbolizing and suggesting another object, or an idea, by natural aptness or by association; a figurative representation; a typical designation; a symbol
3. n. A picture accompanied with a motto, a set of verse, or the like, intended as a moral lesson or meditation.
4. v. rare To represent by an emblem; to symbolize.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a visible symbol representing an abstract idea
2. n. special design or visual object representing a quality, type, group, etc.