[Alexx]

That's exactly why icons are useful.

You speak and read english because you're brought up with it around you. You don't need to know the latin roots for a word to understand it's meaning. The root meaning of an icon is not important, just the fact that it's a 'random squiggle' that is universally recognised regardless of context is it's strength.

You can remove all icons and just replace them with words such as 'save', but now you must translate them for all languages, and scanning for the word is slower.

However, interfaces packed with random icons which have no recognisable meaning - that is a terrible anti-pattern.

[rytis]

Yes, I agree, icons are much faster to recognise than words. But I think we're limited to only a handful of icons that are universally (??) recognisable. And now more often than not I find hovering mouse pointer over an icon just to find out what it does. How easy is to guess what these 3 icons do if you never used the tool before http://imgur.com/TclsCh2 ?

[mbesto]

> But I think we're limited to only a handful of icons that are universally (??) recognisable.

Wouldn't you argue that the floppy disk is a universally recognizable icon for saving? It's hardly misconstrued for something else, and with the exception of youth, it does make sense (without using it before) to a majority of the population.