Try White Flag emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the White Flag emoji mean?
A plain white flag, for surrender and giving up.
Concessionary, usually with humour. Almost nobody uses it for a literal truce.
How to use 🏳️ naturally
Admitting defeat, ending an argument and jokes about being beaten.
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 🏳️
- 2014
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, White Flag was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.7, dated 2014. Another retrospective label, covering characters recognised as emoji in 2014.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
Added in 2016 as a plain waving flag on a pole. It is also the base character for the rainbow and transgender flags, which are built by joining a symbol to it.
- Today
How its use evolved
Admitting defeat, ending an argument and jokes about being beaten.
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.
I give up, you win 🏳️
Three hours on this bug 🏳️
Calling it, we are done 🏳️
When to use it
Using 🏳️ clearly
Admitting defeat, ending an argument and jokes about being beaten. It lands as white flag emoji or surrender 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 white flag emoji
What does 🏳️ mean in a text message?
A plain white flag, for surrender and giving up. Concessionary, usually with humour. Almost nobody uses it for a literal truce.
Is 🏳️ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are white flag emoji, surrender emoji, 🏳️ meaning, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🏳️ look different on another device?
U+1F3F3 U+FE0F 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 white flag 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 white flag emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🏳️ as emoji in Emoji 0.7, dated 2014. 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+1F3F3 U+FE0F | 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 | \1F3F3 \FE0F | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F3F3}\u{FE0F} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%8F%B3%EF%B8%8F | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F3F3 U+FE0F
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- white flag emojisurrender emoji🏳️ meaning
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