"Pi" fonts  Where does the term “pi fonts” come from? And who
was the first to use or popularize it?  I always assumed it was
an odd abbreviation of “pictogram”, but it was never clear
because the term is sometimes used to describe any non-
alphanumeric/symbol font. If pi does indeed stand for pictogram,
that would limit its relevance to a specific subset of symbol
fonts – for example, mathematical symbols aren't pictograms.
That doesn't really match up with the kinds of fonts I typically
think of when I hear the term “pi” either, which tend to be be
more technical and abstract than they are pictorial. Maybe
there's a connection to the mathematical concept of pi?  I also
considered that there might be a connection to the letterpress
concept of “printers pi(e)”, but any connection there seems
rather weak.  For whatever it's worth, the term doesn't show up
in anything on Google books until about 1970.  Joshua Langman's
picture  Because pi fonts appear to be random collections of
symbols, the term is a reference