Heterogram (from [Greek]
heteros, meaning "different", +
-gram, meaning "written") is a term used mostly in the study of ancient texts (
philology), referring to a special kind of a
logogram consisting of the written representation of a word in a foreign language. In most cases, the two languages share the same script. However, while the word in the foreign language may be written either phonetically (representing the sounds of the foreign language) or logographically, in the borrowing language it is necessarily a logograph, since there is no relationship between the symbols used and the pronunciation of the word in the borrowing language.