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Wikipedia: Icon
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An icon (also spelled "ikon") is an artistic representations of anything considered holy and divine, such as paintings (including relief paintings), sculpture, or mosaics, sometimes quite small in size, generally regarded by their users as symbols or in some sense physical manifestations of the thing represented. Icons are used particularly in [Eastern Orthodox]? churches and places of worship. Many religious homes in Russia, for example, have icons hanging on the wall. There is a rich history and rich patterns of [religious symbolism]? associated with icons.
See also iconography.
By extension from the primary sense of the word, in computer jargon, the tiny, clickable pictures on many computer systems (GUI-based) used to provide startup links to programs are also called icons.
There is also a programming language called Icon.