Definition of "symbolism" []

• The practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships. (noun)
• A system of symbols or representations. (noun)
• A symbolic meaning or representation. (noun)
• Revelation or suggestion of intangible conditions or truths by artistic invention. (noun)
• The movement, theory, or practice of the late 19th-century Symbolists. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But we now arrive at a higher division of masonic symbolism, which, passing beyond these tangible symbols, brings us to those which are of a more abstruse nature, and which, as being developed in a ceremonial form, controlled and directed by the ritual of the order, may be designated as the _ritualistic symbolism_ of Freemasonry."
• "The name symbolism is also entirely French, referring to Mlle."
• "Still, the term symbolism did not catch on in Germany as a name for any specific poetic group, though Hofmannsthal, e.g., in “Das Gespräch über Gedichte” (1903), pro - claimed the symbol the one element necessary in po - etry."