Jack-O-Lantern Emoji
A carved pumpkin lit from inside, the single emoji that means Halloween.
Try Jack-O-Lantern emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Jack-O-Lantern emoji mean?
A carved pumpkin lit from inside, the single emoji that means Halloween.
Festive and only mildly spooky. It is the whole of Halloween in one character, which is why it appears in October and nowhere else.
How to use 🎃 naturally
Halloween, autumn and anything mildly spooky.
Activity emoji name what is happening rather than how anyone feels about it. They work as compact labels for plans, results and hobbies, which is why invitations and announcements lean on them so heavily.
From standard to slang
The history of 🎃
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Jack-O-Lantern 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
A pumpkin with a carved face lit from within, from the Irish turnip lantern that became a pumpkin in North America. It is the only character in the set drawn for the festival itself; everything else Halloween borrows an animal or a skull.
- Today
How its use evolved
Halloween, autumn and anything mildly spooky.
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.
Carving these tonight 🎃
Costume sorted, finally 🎃
Whole street is decorated already 🎃
When to use it
Using 🎃 clearly
Halloween, autumn and anything mildly spooky. It lands as halloween emoji or pumpkin emoji 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 jack-o-lantern emoji
What does 🎃 mean in a text message?
A carved pumpkin lit from inside, the single emoji that means Halloween. Festive and only mildly spooky. It is the whole of Halloween in one character, which is why it appears in October and nowhere else.
Is 🎃 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are halloween emoji, pumpkin emoji, 🎃 meaning, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🎃 look different on another device?
U+1F383 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 jack-o-lantern 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 jack-o-lantern 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.
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+1F383 | 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 | \1F383 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F383} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%8E%83 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F383
- Category
- Activities & Play
- Also known as
- halloween emojipumpkin emoji🎃 meaning
Put it in a message
When 🎃 is the right choice
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