Green Heart Emoji

A green heart. The one with a split personality.

💚 carries more distinct cultural meanings than any other colored heart. ❤️ means love. 💙 means calm loyalty. 💜 means BTS. But 💚? It means nature, Ireland, Islam, NCT, jealousy, cannabis, veganism, money, and Elphaba depending on who's sending it. No other heart works this hard.

The jealousy angle makes 💚 unique. It's the only heart emoji with a potentially negative reading. Every other heart color is some shade of positive. But Shakespeare's "green-eyed monster" from Othello (1604) has been haunting the color green for over 400 years, and it followed the color right into the emoji keyboard.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F49AU+1F49A GREEN HEART. Part of the original colored heart batch alongside 💛, 💙, and 💜.

💚 is a chameleon. The community using it determines everything about what it means.

On environmental and wellness social media, 💚 is the default. Zero-waste accounts, plant-based food posts, hiking photos, Greenpeace campaigns, sustainability brands, they all use 💚 as shorthand for "I care about the planet." It pairs with ♻️, 🌿, and 🌱 constantly.

Every March 17, 💚 floods social media for St. Patrick's Day alongside ☘️ and 🍀. Emojipedia lists it as a primary St. Patrick's Day emoji. The spike is one of the most predictable seasonal patterns in emoji usage.

In K-pop, 💚 belongs to NCT. The group's official fandom color is lime green, and Emojipedia notes the emoji "is frequently used on Twitter/X in reference to the Korean boy band NCT." NCTzens (the fandom) flood tweets with 💚 the way BTS fans use 💜.

In Islamic culture, green is sacred, associated with paradise and the Prophet Muhammad. The Arabic word for "paradise" (Jannah) means "garden," an image inherently green. 💚 carries spiritual weight in Muslim communities, used alongside religious observances and holiday greetings during Ramadan and Eid.

The jealousy reading lives in meme culture. "Watching my ex's vacation pics 💚" or "not jealous at all 💚" uses the Shakespeare-derived irony deliberately. People who use 💚 for envy are almost always being sardonic.

And since the Wicked movie (2024)) turned Elphaba into a cultural moment, director Jon M. Chu used 💚 and 🩷 as Elphaba/Glinda shorthand in his social media teases. The Wicked fandom now treats 💚🩷 like BLACKPINK treats 🩷🖤.

The association between green and jealousy predates emoji by four centuries. Shakespeare used "green-eyed jealousy" in The Merchant of Venice (1596), then sharpened it to the famous "green-eyed monster" in Othello (1604): Iago warns Othello, "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on." The metaphor wasn't random. In Renaissance humoral medicine, green was a "bilious hue" linked to an imbalance of bodily fluids that caused fear and jealousy. The phrase persisted so well that today we're more likely to say "green with envy" than simply "envious."

The positive associations with green are older and broader. Green is the color of growing things in virtually every culture. It carries renewal, fertility, and health. In Islam, green's sacred status comes from Qur'anic descriptions of paradise as a garden with green garments, cushions, and foliage. The Prophet Muhammad's favorite color to wear was green, and he was buried in a green Yemeni mantle. Flags of Muslim-majority nations like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Mauritania feature green prominently.

In Ireland, green became the national color through its association with the Irish nationalist movement and the green stripe of the Irish tricolor. St. Patrick's Day turned it into a global cultural export every March.

💚 arrived in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as part of the original colored heart batch. The emoji inherited all of green's accumulated meanings at once: nature, growth, Islam, Ireland, jealousy, money, health, and whatever else green signifies in a given culture. No design committee could have planned for the K-pop fandom that would claim it a decade later, or the Wicked movie that would pair it with 🩷 as a character signature.

💚 means different things depending on where you are, more so than almost any other heart.

In the Muslim world, 💚 carries spiritual significance. Green is the color of paradise in Islamic tradition, described repeatedly in the Qur'an. Using 💚 in Ramadan greetings, Eid messages, or alongside religious content is common and respectful. It's not casual the way it might be in other contexts.

In Ireland and Irish diaspora communities, 💚 is national identity compressed into an emoji. March 17 turns 💚 into the most-used heart on Irish social media. It carries genuine cultural pride, not just "I'm wearing green today."

In the US and Western contexts, green maps to three things: nature/environment, money/wealth (US dollars are green), and jealousy. 💚 in a financial context can signal prosperity or greed.

In South Korea, 💚 is NCT's color. K-pop fandom colors are treated as identity markers, and using the wrong group's color can cause real fan drama. 💚 tweets are functionally NCTzen territory on Korean Twitter.

In cannabis culture, 💚 signals support for marijuana and legalization. It was widely used during Germany's 2024 cannabis legalization and is common in 420-related content.

• •Shakespeare gave green its jealousy association twice: "green-eyed jealousy" in The Merchant of Venice (1596) and the famous "green-eyed monster" in Othello (1604). The metaphor came from Renaissance humoral medicine, where green was linked to a bilious imbalance that caused fear and envy.
• •Emojipedia explicitly notes that 💚 "is frequently used on Twitter/X in reference to the Korean boy band NCT." It's one of the few colored hearts that Emojipedia ties to a specific cultural community by name.
• •The Prophet Muhammad's favorite color to wear was green, and he was buried in a green Yemeni mantle. The Qur'an describes the garments of paradise dwellers as green.
• •Green is considered the most soothing color for the human eye. A study in Environmental Health Perspectives found exposure to green spaces reduces cortisol (the stress hormone). This is part of why hospitals and wellness brands lean on green in their branding.
• •The Wicked movie (2024)) turned 💚🩷 into a character pairing emoji. Director Jon M. Chu used the green and pink heart emojis in his Super Bowl trailer teases, mapping Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) to 💚 and Glinda (Ariana Grande) to 🩷.
• •💚 was used widely during Germany's 2024 cannabis legalization to signal support. Since there's no cannabis leaf emoji, green hearts became the de facto 420 symbol.

• •Sending 💚 in a romantic context can accidentally signal "I think of you as a friend" or even "I'm jealous." If you're trying to be romantic, pick ❤️ or 🩷 instead. Green is nature's color, not love's.
• •Using 💚 with the wrong K-pop group is a fandom faux pas. NCTzens own 💚. Using it in BTS content (where 💜 reigns) confuses the signal and can draw pushback from both fandoms.
• •The jealousy reading is alive enough that bare 💚 in certain contexts (responding to an ex's post, reacting to someone's vacation) will be read as envious, even if you meant it positively. Pair it with words to clarify.

• •Shakespeare gave green its jealousy meaning twice: first as "green-eyed jealousy" in The Merchant of Venice (1596), then as the iconic "green-eyed monster" in Othello (1604). The phrase was rooted in Renaissance humoral medicine, where green was linked to bilious imbalance. Over 400 years later, that association is still alive in 💚.
• •The Wicked movie (2024)) paired 💚 with 🩷 as an Elphaba/Glinda emoji signature. Director Jon M. Chu used the pairing in his Super Bowl trailer teases on X. Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda) turned green and pink into the color duo of late 2024, giving 💚 a pop culture boost beyond its environmental and fandom uses.
• •NCT, the South Korean boy group under SM Entertainment, has lime green as their official fandom color. Emojipedia explicitly notes that 💚 "is frequently used on Twitter/X in reference to the Korean boy band NCT." NCTzens treat 💚 the way ARMY treats 💜: it's not just a heart, it's a flag.
• •Green is sacred in Islam, described in the Qur'an as the color of paradise. The Prophet Muhammad's favorite color to wear was green, and he was buried in a green Yemeni mantle. Flags of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and other Muslim-majority nations feature green prominently. 💚 carries genuine spiritual weight in these communities.
• •Environmental organizations (Greenpeace, WWF, Sierra Club) use 💚 as a brand-adjacent signal on social media. The emoji does double duty as affection and activism, blurring the line between personal love and political commitment in a way no other heart manages.

• •💚 is U+1F49AU+1F49A GREEN HEART. Part of Unicode 6.0 (2010), Emoji 1.0 (2015). Common shortcodes: :green_heart::green_heart: on Slack, Discord, and GitHub.
• •GitHub CI uses 💚 to indicate passing builds (green = success). If you see 💚 in a commit message or PR title, it often means "tests passed" rather than any emotional meaning.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.