…in the first place a sign may, in its own firstness, either be a mere idea or quality of feeling, or it may be a ‘sinsign’, that is, an individual existent (and P. holds, with Hegel, that existence consists in the blind reaction of the existent with the rest of the universe in which it exists), or it may (like a word) be a general type (‘legisign’) to which existents may conform.
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-firstness-secondness-thirdness-and-reducibility-fourthness-r-2