character vs symbol

character

noun
  • A written or printed symbol, or letter. 

  • Strength of mind; resolution; independence; individuality; moral strength. 

  • A complex number representing an element of a finite Abelian group. 

  • A being involved in the action of a story. 

  • A person or individual, especially one who is unknown. 

  • Quality, position, rank, or capacity; quality or conduct with respect to a certain office or duty. 

  • One of the basic elements making up a text file or string: a code representing a printing character or a control character. 

  • A distinguishing feature; characteristic; trait; phene. 

  • A complex of traits marking a person, group, breed, or type. 

  • A unique or extraordinary individual; a person characterized by peculiar or notable traits, especially charisma. 

symbol

noun
  • A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object. 

  • A type of noun whereby the form refers to the same entity independently of the context; a symbol arbitrarily denotes a referent. See also icon and index. 

  • A signalling event on a communications channel; a signal that cannot be further divided into meaningful information. 

  • An internal identifier used by a debugger to relate parts of the compiled program to the corresponding names in the source code. 

  • A summary of a dogmatic statement of faith. 

  • The numerical expression which defines a plane's position relative to the assumed axes. 

  • A thing considered the embodiment of a concept or object. 

verb
  • To symbolize. 

How often have the words character and symbol occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )