Do you remember Charles Bliss said only 100 symbol parts were needed to type all of his symbols.  Well, he was telling the truth.  But he was referring to the graphical parts, not the semantic parts.  Below is an example of those graphic elements, in this case, characters from the Bliss51.ttf font:

All of the symbol parts above except one are just lines without meaning until they are typed together into a symbol with a meaning.  Do you you know which symbol part has a meaning by itself?