homoiconicity

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *sem-

Proto-Indo-European *somHós

Proto-Hellenic *homós

Ancient Greek ὁμός (homós)der.

English homo-

English iconic

English homoiconic

Proto-Indo-European *-kos

Proto-Indo-European *-ikos

Proto-Italic *-ikos

Latin -icuslbor.

Old French -iquebor.

Middle English -ik

English -ic

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-ts

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts

Latin -itāsder.

Old French -itebor.

Middle English -ite

English -ity

English -icity

English homoiconicity

From homoiconic (“self-representing”) + -icity.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌhəʊ.məʊˌaɪ.kɒˈnɪ.sɪ.ti/

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

Noun

homoiconicity (uncountable)

1. (programming) A property of some programming languages, in which the primary representation of programs is also a data structure in a primitive type of the language itself.
   • 2010, Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii, Semiotics of Programming, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 179:

     Homoiconicity is a feature of a programming language system that denotes that a computer program has the same form as the data that are input and output by the program.

Related terms

• homoiconic

Further reading

• homoiconicity on Wikipedia.Wikipedia