ideogram; ideograph; ideographic script
Technical term in linguistics and writing systems for a character or script that represents an idea directly, such as Chinese characters. Often contrasted with 表音文字 (phonogram).
See also: 表音文字
Kanji are often regarded as a type of ideogram.
Please explain the difference between ideographic and phonetic scripts.
表音文字 represents sounds (phonograms), while 表意文字 represents ideas directly.
象形文字 are pictograms that depict objects, a subset of ideograms; 表意文字 is a broader category.
Compound of 表意 (hyōi, 'expressing meaning') + 文字 (moji, 'character, script'). The term is a modern linguistic coinage, likely from the late 19th or early 20th century, modeled on Western concepts of ideographic writing.