symbol explained
Infinity Symbol
Endlessness, in maths and in tattoos.
- Unicode
- U+221E
- HTML entity
- ∞
Try Infinity Symbol
Edit the text, then change the font and size.
The short answer
What does Infinity Symbol mean?
Endlessness, in maths and in tattoos. Unlimited plans, maths notation and romantic captions.
Background
Where it comes from
The infinity sign is Unicode U+221E and comes from mathematical notation. Outside mathematics it often represents permanence, unlimited quantity or an enduring connection.
In conversation
How to use it
Unlimited plans, maths notation and romantic captions. Copy the character itself when you need plain text that can be searched, selected and pasted like a letter.
Realistic examples
Infinity Symbol in a sentence
“x → ∞”
“Ideas without limits ∞”
“∞ possibilities”
Tone & nuance
What it communicates
Technical in equations and symbolic in captions, branding or personal messages. Surrounding words determine which reading is intended.
Easily confused
Characters that look like ∞
These are separate characters. However similar they render, they sort, search and compare differently — which is why pasting the wrong one is so easy to miss.
Proportional to
U+221D
An open figure that resembles a broken infinity sign, and means something entirely different in an equation.
Infinity emoji
U+267E U+FE0F
The emoji presentation, which some platforms render in colour and which is also used as a neurodiversity symbol.
Digit eight rotated
U+0038
Occasionally typed sideways as a substitute. It sorts as a number and breaks any search for the real character.
For developers
∞ in code
Each value is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the symbol directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+221E | 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 | \221E | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{221E} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%88%9E | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Common questions
Infinity Symbol FAQ
What does the infinity symbol ∞ mean?
Endlessness, in maths and in tattoos. Unlimited plans, maths notation and romantic captions.
How do I type ∞?
The fastest way is the copy button on this page, which puts ∞ on the clipboard on its own, without a label or a stray space. To insert it by hand, use the code point U+221E. In HTML you can write ∞ instead of pasting the character. Windows Character Map and the macOS Emoji & Symbols viewer both let you search for it by name.
Will ∞ look the same everywhere?
∞ is plain text, not an image, so it takes on the font, size and colour of the words around it while keeping the code point U+221E wherever it is pasted. A font with limited coverage can substitute a different glyph or show an empty box, and some apps restyle certain symbols as coloured emoji, so preview it in the app and theme your readers will actually use.
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