His performance in the 2001 Little League World Series made him an unlikely national icon.

Robert Burns makes an unlikely national icon, given his ambivalence about Scotland and Scottishness.

Of course, Mr. Rzepski (pronounced szep-ski) was not doing himself any favors by choosing as the center of his presentation an unlikely icon not destined to seduce the fashion pack.

A shy, ascetic man, Buchi is an unlikely icon for the glitzy new entrepreneurial class his policies have spawned.

In the magazine this week, I profile Han Han, the blogger, novelist, and magazine-cover-model who, at age twenty-eight, is one of the most unlikely icons in Chinese public life.

On an unlikely literary icon: Miss Piggy.

The legend itself inspired considerable passion in the painting's audiences, some of whom (including one of Freud's patients) were transported to a state of religious ecstasy by the sight of it, and created of the painting an unlikely icon of romanticism.

In effect, the Communist Party abandoned Mr. Zhao and the opposition adopted him, making him an unlikely icon of resistance.