Multiply Emoji

✖️ is the Heavy Multiplication X. It has the most split personality of any symbol in Unicode: a math operator, a rejection mark, a UI close button, and since July 23, 2023, a shorthand for 'X the app' (the platform formerly known as Twitter). The underlying character U+2716 HEAVY MULTIPLICATION X sits in the Unicode Dingbats block, a direct import from Hermann Zapf's 1978 ITC Zapf Dingbats. Encoded in Unicode 1.1 in June 1993, it spent decades as a typographic dingbat before emoji presentation arrived in 2010.

The multiplication meaning is the oldest. English mathematician William Oughtred introduced × as a multiplication sign in 1631 in his Clavis Mathematicae. Leibniz pushed back, arguing × was too close to the letter x and proposing · (dot) instead, which is why European math pedagogy often uses the dot. American math education kept the cross. The emoji ✖️ carries the Oughtred lineage into the smartphone era.

The rejection meaning is almost as old: medieval scribes marked errors with an X, a tradition that turned the cross mark into a universal 'wrong' signal. The UI 'close button X' is a late-20th-century descendant, standardized in Microsoft Windows 95 and now on every OS.

The newest meaning is the Twitter rebrand. On July 23, 2023 Elon Musk killed the blue bird and adopted a blackboard-bold X as the platform logo, using U+1D54F MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X, not ✖️ itself. But in casual usage, people started typing ✖️ to mean 'X the app'. Google Trends search volume for 'multiply emoji' quintupled in Q3 2023 after the rebrand.

✖️ does four distinct jobs online, and its meaning swings completely based on the surrounding text:

Math and finance. In equations, school posts, and spreadsheets, ✖️ is unambiguously multiplication. '3 ✖️ 4 = 12'. Fintech and business posts use it for ratio language: 'You can 10 ✖️ your returns'.

Rejection. Mirrors ❌ for 'wrong' or 'incorrect' in test-grading and comparison contexts. Less emphatic than ❌ because it's monochrome and thinner, so it often shows up in older-feeling or more formal rejection contexts.

UI close button. Release notes and product walk-throughs use ✖️ to mean 'tap the X to close'. Documentation style.

X-app shorthand. Post-July-2023 rebrand, 'See you on ✖️' became recognized shorthand for 'see you on X (Twitter)'. This overlaps awkwardly with ❌ (rejection) and 𝕏 (the actual logo character), creating the most tangled set of emoji meanings in years. Ed Sheeran fans also use ✖️) for his 2014 album × (Multiply), which sold over 14 million copies and contained 'Thinking Out Loud'.

The multiplication × was introduced by the English mathematician William Oughtred in 1631, in his textbook Clavis Mathematicae. He chose the cross because it was visually distinct from + and ÷. Gottfried Leibniz pushed back hard in 1698, writing that × was too easily confused with the letter x in algebra, and proposed the middle dot · instead. The dot prevailed in European math pedagogy. The cross won everywhere else, including in engineering, statistics, and most English-language schools.

The X mark as a rejection symbol is older still. Medieval scribes marked mistakes with a cross. Illiterate signers used an X as a legal signature. By the time ITC Zapf Dingbats was published in 1978, the heavy X had three overlapping meanings: multiplication, error, and close. Zapf's glyph does not formally commit to one; the weight and scale are neutral enough to fit all three.

Unicode 1.1 imported the Dingbats block in June 1993, naming U+2716 'HEAVY MULTIPLICATION X' while implicitly acknowledging the rejection role. Emoji 1.0 in 2015 added color support and vendor rendering.

On July 23, 2023, Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X, using U+1D54F MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X as the logo. Because most users can't type a double-struck X from a keyboard, ✖️ became the everyday stand-in. Google Trends search volume for 'multiply emoji' jumped from a baseline of around 2 to a peak of 77 in Q3 2023, the clearest example of a platform rebrand accidentally overloading an existing emoji meaning.

Encoded in Unicode 1.1 (June 1993) as U+2716 HEAVY MULTIPLICATION X, part of the Dingbats block imported from ITC Zapf Dingbats. Emoji presentation added in Unicode 6.0 (2010). Listed in Emoji 1.0 (2015).

1. 1631William Oughtred introduces × as the multiplication sign in *Clavis Mathematicae*, published in Oxford.
2. 1978ITC Zapf Dingbats ships. The heavy X is part of the 100-series, usable for both math and rejection contexts.
3. 1993Unicode 1.1 (June 1993) imports the Dingbats block. U+2716 HEAVY MULTIPLICATION X is assigned.
4. 1995Windows 95 standardizes the 'X in the corner closes the window' UI pattern. The X-as-close-button convention goes mainstream.
5. 2010Unicode 6.0 gives ✖️ emoji presentation with the FE0F variation selector.
6. 2014Ed Sheeran releases × (Multiply), his second studio album. [14 million copies sold worldwide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%97_(album)). The emoji becomes a music-branding symbol.
7. 2015Emoji 1.0 adds ✖️ to the modern emoji set. Vendor renderings stabilize.
8. 2023[July 23 2023: Twitter rebrands to X](https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/twitter-rebranding-x-logo-1235678381/). Search volume for 'multiply emoji' spikes as users hunt for a way to type the platform's new name.

• •The × multiplication sign was introduced by English mathematician William Oughtred in 1631 in Clavis Mathematicae.
• •Leibniz complained in 1698 that × looked too much like the letter x. He proposed · (middle dot) instead. Continental Europe adopted the dot; the English-speaking world kept the cross.
• •Ed Sheeran's × (Multiply), 2014) has sold more than 14 million copies worldwide, making ✖️ one of the most commercially significant emoji symbols in music branding.
• •Twitter's X logo uses U+1D54F MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X, not ✖️. Users default to ✖️ because the double-struck X isn't on any standard keyboard.
• •Google Trends search volume for 'multiply emoji' jumped from a baseline around 2 to a peak of 77 in Q3 2023 after the Twitter rebrand to X.
• •The 'X to close' UI pattern was popularized by Windows 95, but the close-button symbol predates personal computing by centuries. Medieval scribes crossed out errors the same way.
• •Malcolm X adopted the letter X in 1952 while in prison, replacing his 'slave surname' Little. The X stood for an unknown African family name. The letter has carried Black liberation weight ever since.
• •The straight-edge hardcore-punk movement (early 1980s, Washington DC) used hand-stamped Xs to mark underage kids at all-ages shows. The convention inverted into a sobriety badge.

• •Ed Sheeran's × (2014) is one of the best-selling albums of the 2010s. Its cover is literally just the multiplication sign in white on a blue background. The ✖️ emoji is Sheeran-coded for millions of pop fans.
• •Malcolm X and his autobiographical film treatment made the X a symbol of Black American self-determination. Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X uses the letter as core iconography throughout.
• •Straight-edge punk subculture marked hands with X in Sharpie to indicate sobriety at all-ages shows. The convention dates to the early 1980s hardcore scene.
• •Virgil Abloh's Off-White built an entire luxury fashion brand around industrial X motifs and quote-mark typography. Countless Instagram captions use ✖️ in that specific streetwear aesthetic.
• •Microsoft's 'X to close' UI pattern dates to Windows 95 and is now universal. Every time you close a browser tab, you're interacting with a descendant of Oughtred's multiplication sign.

• •✖️ is U+2716 paired with U+FE0F for emoji presentation. Without FE0F it renders as monochrome text ✖.
• •Twitter's X logo uses U+1D54F MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X, a different codepoint. Don't use ✖️ when you actually need the logo character.
• •Shortcodes vary: :heavy_multiplication_x::heavy_multiplication_x: on many platforms, :x::x: usually maps to ❌ instead.

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