an indication of something...

A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces or modifies....That for which it stands is called its object, that which it conveys, its meaning; and the idea which it gives rise, its interpretant.... [the sign creates in the mind] an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. This sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea which I have sometimes called the ground of that representation."

C. S. Peirce, quoted in Umberto Eco (1979) The Role of the Reader 7.2

or something else...?