semen.

a1866 J. Grote in Jrnl. Philol. (1872) 4 158 The noematism of it [sc. a language] might be..written..by symbols naturally suggesting themselves for the visual percepts, and by others agreed upon for abstract terms and those related to other senses than the eye. It might be well to call such quasi-writing or exhibition to the eye by other than vocal elements, sematism, and the symbols semes.

1906 C. S. Peirce in Monist 16 506 By a Seme, I shall mean anything which serves for any purpose as a substitute for an object of which it is, in some sense, a representative or Sign... The term ‘The mortality of man’ is a Seme.

1923 C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards Meaning of Meaning 438 We are introduced to Semes, Phemes, and Delomes.

1931 G. Stern Meaning & Change of Meaning iii. 31 Meaning is a property peculiar not only to what we traditionally call words, but also to parts of words, e.g. the genitive ending in man's... As a comprehensive term..Vendryes..has proposed sémantème, and C. S. Peirce, quoted by Ogden-Richards..has seme and pheme.

1951 E. A. Nida in Word 7 5 The simple term seme identifies any minimal feature of meaning.

1966 D. G. Hays in Automatic Transl. of Lang. (NATO Summer School, Venice, 1962) 163 These semes are more nearly the units wanted in translation than the morphs or morphemes that comprise them.

1973 Screen Spring 18 [Eric Buyssens]..established a certain number of notions and distinctions (seme and semic act, intrinsic and extrinsic semes, direct and substitutive semes).