Sunday, January 20, 2013

Iconize

iconize
verb, transitive. To reduce a window on a video display terminal to a small symbol or graphic. To treat as an icon.

Fran had been working for the company only a short time before she realized that the entire staff--not just the Chief Executive Officer and the Board of Directors--had iconized the logo to a point far beyond any level she had previously experienced. They had a graphics standards manual they were expected to follow, even on the lowly weekly newsletter she was responsible for producing. She decided she'd better take the manual home and read it over the weekend, in self-defense.

"I guess this is the price I have to pay for getting a job so high up in the corporate world," she thought as she unlocked her car Friday afternoon and tossed the manual onto the passenger seat. As she turned to climb in, she saw the company president, in his BMW, glaring at her. "What's wrong with him?" Fran wondered. On impulse, she smiled at him, gave him a little wave, then continued her entry into her old Geo. "I guess he's offended by the flaking paint on this beater," she thought as she started the engine. To her usual relief, it fired, and she revved it so she could listen to it. "Well, if I can keep my job and save for awhile, I should be able to replace it in a few months. Then, he won't have to look at it anymore."

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

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