Try Cancer emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Cancer emoji mean?
The crab's claws, covering roughly 21 June to 22 July.
Warm in astrological terms and completely unrelated to the illness. That ambiguity only exists in the word, never in the symbol, which is one reason the glyph is preferred to the name.
How to use ♋ naturally
Astrology posts and star-sign bios. Not related to the illness.
Reaction symbols work like visual emphasis: they reinforce a word, rate an idea or replace a short response. Repetition normally increases intensity, but it can also make a message feel more performative.
From standard to slang
The history of ♋
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Cancer was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. That label is retrospective: Unicode applied it later to the early mobile core it inherited from the Japanese carriers.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
Two curled shapes rotated against each other, representing the crab's claws. It is often described as a sideways 69, which is a coincidence of shape.
- Today
How its use evolved
Astrology posts and star-sign bios. Not related to the illness.
Dates follow Unicode’s official Emoji Versions chart. Versions before Emoji 1.0 are labelled retrospectively. See the history of emoji.
In conversation
Examples of ♋ in messages
These examples show the emoji in complete messages, where the words make its intended tone easier to read.
July birthday, ♋ as they come
♋ sun, moon and rising, unfortunately
Cooked for everyone again — very ♋ of me
When to use it
Using ♋ clearly
Astrology posts and star-sign bios. Not related to the illness. It lands as cancer zodiac emoji or ♋ meaning when the rest of the message supports that reading, and it is the surrounding words that do the deciding — so in a sensitive, professional or cross-cultural conversation, say the thing outright as well.
Common questions
About the cancer emoji
What does ♋ mean in a text message?
The crab's claws, covering roughly 21 June to 22 July. Warm in astrological terms and completely unrelated to the illness. That ambiguity only exists in the word, never in the symbol, which is one reason the glyph is preferred to the name.
Is ♋ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are cancer zodiac emoji, ♋ meaning, cancer star sign symbol, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does ♋ look different on another device?
U+264B identifies the emoji; the picture is a font, drawn separately by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Only the artwork changes, never the character.
How do I copy and paste the cancer emoji?
Use the copy button at the top of this page. ♋ is a character, not an image, so it pastes into messages, captions and filenames as ordinary text.
When was the cancer emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records ♋ as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. Early emoji version numbers can be retrospective, so this date describes its place in the standardised emoji set rather than the first-ever appearance of the underlying symbol.
Easily confused
♋ compared with similar emoji
These sit close enough in meaning that people reach for the wrong one. Here is what actually separates them.
Cancer or Leo?
♋ is two curled shapes rotated against each other, often read as a sideways 69. ♌ is a single loop with a tail leaving it, so one is symmetrical and the other is not.
For developers
♋ in code
Every value below is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the emoji directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+264B | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | ♋ | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | ♋ | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \264B | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{264B} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%99%8B | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+264B
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- cancer zodiac emoji♋ meaningcancer star sign symbol
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