Symbols & Reactions

Capricorn Emoji

The sea-goat, drawn as a looping V and tail, covering roughly 22 December to 19 January.

Try Capricorn emoji

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Preview
Working through the holidays again ♑
28px

Meaning & usage

What does the Capricorn emoji mean?

The sea-goat, drawn as a looping V and tail, covering roughly 22 December to 19 January.

Reserved in reputation and the hardest of the twelve to read at a glance. Its tail is often mistaken for a stray mark rather than part of the symbol.

How to use naturally

Astrology posts and profile decoration.

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

  1. 2010

    First defined as emoji

    According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Capricorn 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.

  2. Before the keyboard

    Its visual roots

    A looping V running into a curled tail, standing for the sea-goat. It is the hardest of the twelve to recognise, and the tail is often mistaken for a stray mark.

  3. Today

    How its use evolved

    Astrology posts and profile decoration.

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.

  • Working through the holidays again ♑
  • January birthday ♑
  • ♑ and already planning next year

When to use it

Using clearly

Astrology posts and profile decoration. It lands as capricorn 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 capricorn emoji

What does ♑ mean in a text message?

The sea-goat, drawn as a looping V and tail, covering roughly 22 December to 19 January. Reserved in reputation and the hardest of the twelve to read at a glance. Its tail is often mistaken for a stray mark rather than part of the symbol.

Is ♑ always positive?

Not always. Its usual readings are capricorn emoji, ♑ meaning, capricorn zodiac symbol, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.

Why does ♑ look different on another device?

U+2651 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 capricorn 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 capricorn 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.

  • vs

    Capricorn or Aquarius?

    ♑ has a looping tail and is often read as a stray mark. ♒ is two clean waves, which makes it much the easier of the two to recognise.

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.

Code formats for the Capricorn emoji
FormatValueWhen to use itCopy
UnicodeU+2651The 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\2651For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value.
JavaScript\u{2651}A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression.
URL-encoded%E2%99%91Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests.

Reference card

Emoji details

Unicode
U+2651
Category
Symbols & Reactions
Also known as
capricorn emoji♑ meaningcapricorn zodiac symbol

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