Prohibited Emoji

A red circle crossed by a 45-degree diagonal slash running from upper-left to lower-right. 🚫 is the universal "no." The International Organization for Standardization calls it the general prohibition sign, also known as the interdictory circle, circle-backslash, no symbol, or universal no. Its exact geometry is locked by ISO 3864-1:2011: a red band 10% of the outer diameter thick, a slash 8% thick, at exactly 45 degrees.

Where 🛑 commands a stop and ⛔ blocks entry, 🚫 forbids the concept. Overlay it on anything, and that thing is not allowed. In text, 🚫 is the blanket "no" emoji. "🚫📱 at the table." "🚫🧢" (no lying, Gen Z cap slang). "🚫 yapping." It negates whatever it sits next to, which is exactly what its original 1931 designers intended when they put it on signs saying no parking and no waiting.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (October 2010) as codepoint U+1F6AB, originally under the Unicode name NO ENTRY SIGN. Every major platform renders it with the same red-band-plus-slash ISO geometry.

The construction 🚫[thing] is its own micro-language. 🚫🧢 means no lying (cap = lie in Gen Z slang). 🚫📱 means phones away. 🚫🗣️ means shut up. 🚫🤝 means no collaboration. The emoji works as a prefix negator, something no other emoji really does as cleanly.

Platform tone shifts are muted. 🚫 reads the same on LinkedIn ("🚫 spam") as on TikTok ("🚫🧢 fr"). It's one of the few emoji that scales from corporate to Gen Z without changing tone. That's a direct consequence of its ISO-standardized blandness: the symbol is deliberately neutral, which makes it universal.

Heavy use in gaming, content moderation, signage references, and PSA captions. Less in emotional posts than 🛑 or ⛔ because 🚫 feels clinical. It bans without feelings.

The red-circle-with-a-diagonal-slash is 94 years old. It was designed by a subcommittee during the 1931 Geneva Convention on the Unification of Road Signs, organized by the League of Nations. Representatives from Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium were tasked with creating a prohibition marker that would differentiate "you cannot do this" signs from informational circular signs. The diagonal slash, borrowed from Swiss urban signage of the 1920s, was the compromise that everyone could live with.

It spread through European road signage in the 1930s, then slowly through workplace safety in the postwar era. North American adoption came late, mostly because the US already had its own sign system under the MUTCD. The International Organization for Standardization codified the symbol in ISO 3864, first published in 1984, revised multiple times, current version ISO 3864-1:2011. That standard is why every modern 🚫 has the same 45-degree angle and the same 10%/8% band-to-slash ratio.

The symbol was seared into pop-culture memory in 1984 by the Ghostbusters logo, designed by Michael C. Gross. The "no ghost" became one of the most recognizable marks of the 1980s and the most famous single use of the prohibition circle in entertainment.

Unicode added 🚫 in version 6.0 (October 11, 2010) at codepoint U+1F6AB, originally under the Unicode name NO ENTRY SIGN. That name is technically awkward because ⛔ is more literally the no-entry sign, but the Unicode committee kept the naming unchanged to avoid breaking compatibility.

1. 1931Geneva Convention subcommittee (Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium) designs the red-circle-and-slash for European road signs. Borrowed partly from 1920s Swiss urban signage.
2. 1949Post-war UN Protocol on Road Signs re-adopts the symbol, spreading it further across Europe.
3. 1968Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals formalizes the circle-slash as a standard prohibition symbol.
4. 1984Michael C. Gross designs the Ghostbusters 'no ghost' logo. The interdictory circle becomes pop-culture shorthand.
5. 1984ISO publishes ISO 3864 safety sign standard, specifying exact geometry of the prohibition circle.
6. 2010Unicode 6.0 adds U+1F6AB, officially named NO ENTRY SIGN in the Unicode spec despite being the general prohibition symbol.
7. 2011ISO 3864-1:2011 updates the standard. Band is 10% of outer diameter, slash is 8%, at exactly 45 degrees.
8. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0. All major vendors ship the same ISO-compliant design.

• •The 1931 Geneva Convention subcommittee that invented the circle-slash included representatives from Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. The diagonal was a compromise, not anyone's first-choice design.
• •Under ISO 3864-1:2011, the red band is exactly 10% of the outer diameter and the slash is exactly 8%. At 45 degrees, upper-left to lower-right. That's why every emoji version looks essentially identical.
• •The Ghostbusters logo from 1984 flips the slash direction to upper-right-to-lower-left for the US version, matching US instinct. European versions of the logo respect the ISO direction.
• •Unicode officially calls 🚫 'NO ENTRY SIGN,' which is confusing because ⛔ is the actual no-entry traffic sign. The naming quirk dates to 2010 and can't be changed without breaking character databases.
• •The symbol has at least seven names in English: no symbol, general prohibition sign, interdictory circle, circle-backslash, nay, universal no, and prohibited. 'No symbol' is the most common, 'interdictory circle' is the most technical.
• •In the 1970s, the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) redrew the ISO no-smoking symbol for US federal use. This version is what you see on airplane panels today.
• •The '🚫🧢' combo (no cap = no lying) was one of the first widely adopted 'prefix emoji' constructions where the emoji precedes and negates whatever follows it. Pre-2020 this usage was rare.

• •Ghostbusters (1984): Michael C. Gross's no-ghost logo made the interdictory circle a pop-culture icon. Forty-plus years and sequels later, it still reads instantly.
• •'No cap' on TikTok: 🚫🧢 as shorthand for 'no lying' exploded in 2020 and remains one of the most recognizable Gen Z emoji phrases. Dictionary.com covered it as part of the Gen Z slang wave.
• •'Ghostbusted' reaction memes: users paste 🚫 over a person or object, mimicking the Ghostbusters logo style. Especially popular in sports fan communities for 'canceling' rival players.
• •US inflight no-smoking sign: the symbol on every airplane aisle panel is a direct descendant of ISO 3864, redrawn by AIGA in the 1970s.

• •🚫 is codepoint U+1F6AB. Official Unicode name: NO ENTRY SIGN (yes, confusingly).
• •Common shortcodes: :no_entry_sign::no_entry_sign:, :prohibited::prohibited: on various platforms.
• •Renders identically on all major platforms because ISO 3864 locks the geometry.

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