Logo

How to spell logo

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce logo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does logo mean?

1. nounA distinctive symbol, design, or stylised lettering used to identify a company, brand, or organisation.

Logo in a sentence

• The design team spent weeks refining the company logo.

• Every invoice carries the firm's logo in the top corner.

Where does logo come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Logo is a twentieth-century shortening of logotype, a printing term that combined the Greek logos, meaning 'word' or 'speech', with typos, meaning 'impression' or 'stamp'. In the world of typesetting, a logotype was originally a single block of type bearing a whole word or a frequently used group of letters, cast together to save the compositor time. As advertising grew, printers began designing distinctive lettered emblems for companies, and these custom marks inherited the name logotype. By the 1930s and especially the 1960s the snappy clipped form logo had taken over in everyday business and design speech. The same logos root sits behind a huge family of English words, from logic to dialogue to the many sciences ending in -logy, all of which deal with words, reasoning, or study.

How the word is built

• logo (clipping of logotype: from Greek logos 'word'
• typos 'impression, stamp')