skull and crossbones
Unicode: 2620 FE0F
Description
A skull and crossbones, typically rendered as a white skull with two crossed white bones underneath, on a black background.
Group:
Smileys & Emotion > face-negative
Status:
fully-qualified
Emotion:
Often evokes fear, danger, warning, or death. Can also be used ironically or humorously to represent something 'dead' (e.g., a dead battery) or 'deadly' (e.g., a deadly joke).
Backstory
The skull and crossbones is a universal symbol for poison, death, and piracy, with roots in ancient heraldry and maritime flags. The emoji was approved as part of Unicode 5.2 in 2009 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. The 'FE0F' is a variation selector, specifying that the character should be displayed as an emoji (colored graphic) rather than a text character (black and white).
Usage Examples
- Warning: 'Toxic waste! ☠️'
- Pirate theme: 'Ahoy, matey! ☠️'
- Fatal error/failure: 'My computer crashed! ☠️'
- Halloween: 'Happy Halloween! ☠️'
- Extreme measure: 'I'm so tired, I could just ☠️'
Cultural Differences
Western culture:
Strongly associated with pirates, poison, danger, warning signs, and Halloween.
East Asian culture:
Similar associations with danger and death, but can also be used playfully in certain contexts, for example, to denote something 'cool' or 'badass' (like a rebel symbol), or in gaming for defeat/game over.