Symbolwise helps you identify a symbol, understand what it means, where it came from, how it's used in different contexts — and how confidently the evidence supports that interpretation.
Search by what it looks like, not just its name.
Don't know its name? Narrow down by shape, symmetry and colour instead.
Laundry labels, dashboards, medicine, packaging and more.
The full published catalogue.
See commonly confused symbols side by side.
An ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic sign shaped like a cross with a looped top, signifying life.
A sideways figure-eight (∞) denoting an unbounded quantity in mathematics, and used more broadly as a symbol of endlessness.
Three chasing arrows forming a triangular loop, used internationally to indicate recyclability or recycled content.
A capital C inside a circle (©), used to indicate a claim of copyright in a work.
A superscript 'TM' (™), used to indicate a claimed but not necessarily registered trademark.
A superscript capital R inside a circle (®), used only for marks formally registered with a national trademark office.
A staff with a single serpent coiled around it, associated in Greek mythology with Asclepius, the god of medicine.
A winged staff with two serpents wound around it, originally the attribute of Hermes (Mercury), the messenger god.
Identical apart from whether the notehead is filled, which is a great deal of meaning carried by one detail.
Two different characters that render alike, substituted for each other constantly.
A circle crossed by a diagonal, in two unrelated fields — and a third look-alike in Scandinavian orthography.
The same lower-case letter, claimed by a constant and by a multiplier of a thousand.
Two rightward arrows asserting that one thing follows from another, in unrelated fields.
Different facilities serving different needs, routinely signed with each other's pictogram.
The same loop on a bin and on a package asserts completely different things.
One is an astronomical mark for the Moon. The other is a religious and national emblem. The difference is a single star, and the consequence of confusing them is not small.
Every meaning on Symbolwise is sourced, dated and rated for confidence across several independent dimensions — identity, official meaning, historical origin, cultural meaning, current use and visual match — each with a plain-English rationale, never a bare percentage. Disputed and sensitive interpretations are clearly marked, not hidden or resolved into a single false answer.
Read our methodology →