image vs symbol

image

verb
  • To represent by an image or symbol; to portray. 

  • To create an image of. 

  • To create a complete backup copy of a file system or other entity. 

  • To reflect, mirror. 

noun
  • A statue or idol. 

  • What a function maps to. 

  • A file that contains all information needed to produce a live working copy. (See disk image and image copy.) 

  • A form of interference: a weaker "copy" of a strong signal that occurs at a different frequency. 

  • The subset of a codomain comprising those elements that are images of something. 

  • A mental picture of something not real or not present. 

  • A characteristic of a person, group or company etc., style, manner of dress, how one is or wishes to be perceived by others. 

  • An optical or other representation of a real object; a graphic; a picture. 

symbol

verb
  • To symbolize. 

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

  • 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. 

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