White Circle Emoji

A solid white circle with a thin outline. ⚪ is the "nothing here yet" circle. In UI design it's the unselected radio button, the unfilled progress dot, the empty state. On a map it's a placeholder waiting for a pin. On a Wordle grid it's the ungraded square. White, in this context, is less a color and more an absence.

⚪ has been in Unicode since 1993 as MEDIUM WHITE CIRCLE (U+26AA), predating the emoji keyboard by more than a decade. Emojipedia lists it as approved in Emoji 1.0 (2015). Alongside ⚫, it's one of the two oldest circles in the set; the colored siblings 🔴🔵 arrived in 2010 and 🟠🟡🟢🟣🟤 only in 2019.

The cultural baggage of the color white is heavier than the emoji suggests. In Western traditions, white signals purity and weddings: Queen Victoria popularized the white wedding dress in 1840 and the association stuck. In much of East Asia, white is the color of mourning and death, used at Chinese, Korean, and some Japanese funerals. In Japanese particularly, a white circle (maru) is also used like a checkmark to mean "correct," the opposite of an X.

So ⚪ is a circle that means blank, correct, surrender, pure, mourning, and nothing, depending on who's reading the message.

⚪ has three main uses, and they don't really overlap.

As an empty state. The most common use. ⚪ marks a list item that hasn't been checked off, a poll option that hasn't been picked, a step that hasn't happened. It's the visual default for "not yet." On Discord and Slack, bots often use ⚪/🔘 pairs for poll results. In project dashboards, ⚪ means "not started."

As a minimalist aesthetic. Paired with ⚫, 🖤, 🤍, or 🕊️ for clean, monochrome, design-heavy content. Instagram photo grids, mood boards, and minimal bios lean on ⚪ because it reads as "blank canvas." Unlike 🔴 or 🟢, it doesn't force emotional tone.

As the Japanese OK. In Japan, *maru* (○) means correct or OK, much like ✓ does in the West. A Japanese teacher marking a test answer right will draw a circle; marking it wrong draws an X. This logic bleeds into Japanese texting, where ⚪ or ◯ can mean "yes / correct / good."

It's also picked up a quieter use as an asexual and non-binary symbol in some queer online spaces, though this is niche and context-dependent.

⚪ is one of the older Unicode citizens. It was added to Unicode as MEDIUM WHITE CIRCLE (U+26AA) in 1993 as part of the Miscellaneous Symbols block, long before emoji standardization. It was folded into Emoji 1.0 in 2015 and has been part of every emoji keyboard since.

The symbol predates that by millennia. Humans have drawn empty circles since the first cave paintings. The specific convention of a white disc representing "nothing / blank / other" emerged independently in many places: Chinese Go (black plays first, white responds), Japanese testing (⚪ = correct, ❌ = wrong), Western UI design (⚪ = unselected radio, 🔘 = selected).

As a color, white's history splits neatly by region. In Western Christianity, white became the color of purity, baptism, and brides after Queen Victoria wore a white gown in 1840. In East Asia, white has been the color of funerals for thousands of years. In the first recorded use of a white flag for surrender during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE), the flag already carried funeral associations: mourning for soldiers about to fall. The surrender reading came later.

Western cultures: White = purity, weddings, baptism, peace. A white dress at a wedding, a white dove for peace, a white flag for surrender. Queen Victoria's 1840 wedding set the bridal convention that still dominates Hollywood imagery. In UI design, ⚪ defaults to "empty" or "unselected."

East Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam): White is the traditional color of mourning and death. At Chinese funerals, mourners wear white, and flowers are white. Giving someone a white gift in certain contexts can carry funereal connotations. This is thousands of years old and still holds in many families.

Japan: Mixed and layered. Traditional Shinto weddings feature white kimonos (shiromuku). Funerals use both white and black depending on ritual. A white circle (maru, ○) has an additional life as a test-grading mark meaning "correct" or "OK." Japanese keyboards include separate ⚪ and ◯ glyphs for this reason.

India: White is primarily mourning; widows traditionally wore white. But white also appears in religious purity contexts (white clothing for certain prayers, white flowers at temples).

LGBTQ+ spaces: ⚪ and ⚫ are sometimes used as minimal pride markers, with white associated with asexuality and agender identity in some communities. This is niche, and the association varies by subculture.

• •⚪ has been in Unicode since 1993, predating the emoji keyboard by over a decade. It was part of the Miscellaneous Symbols block alongside ⚫, long before most emojis existed.
• •The white wedding dress was popularized by Queen Victoria in 1840. Before that, English brides wore their best dress regardless of color. Victoria's choice was widely reported and copied, creating a 'tradition' less than 200 years old.
• •The first white flag used for surrender was recorded during China's Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE). The color already carried funeral symbolism, so raising a white flag meant 'we are prepared to die.' The truce meaning evolved from that.
• •In Go), white plays second but gets komi points (typically 6.5 or 7.5) to compensate. The half-point prevents draws. Go is over 2,500 years old and still played daily by millions.
• •The English idiom "white lie" dates to the 1740s. The term contrasts with "black lie", a serious or malicious falsehood, suggesting a harmless fib told to spare feelings.
• •In Japanese, a white circle (maru, ○) means correct. Japanese teachers mark right answers with a circle and wrong ones with an X. This is the inverse of Western convention, where ✓ is right.
• •The 1899 Hague Conventions codified the white flag as a protected symbol under international law. A person carrying a white flag in a war context has a legal right to "inviolability." Misusing a white flag is a war crime.

• •The White Wedding (1840 onwards) — Queen Victoria's 1840 wedding dress to Prince Albert was widely reported and copied by English brides. Within a generation, "white wedding" meant something specific. Before Victoria, brides simply wore their best dress, whatever color it was.
• •White Flag of Surrender (Han Dynasty, 25-220 CE) — The first recorded military use of a white flag for truce comes from the Eastern Han dynasty. The color already carried mourning associations: funerals for warriors about to fall. The surrender meaning layered on top. 1899 Hague Conventions codified it as protected under international law.
• •Go, the 2,500-year-old game — Go) uses black and white stones on a 19x19 grid. Black plays first. White plays second but receives compensating points (komi, typically 6.5 or 7.5) to offset black's opening advantage. The half-point prevents draws. The game is older than any written emoji convention by several thousand years.
• •Wordle (2022) — When Wordle popularized sharing color-grid results on Twitter, ⬜ (white square) marked letters not in the word. ⚪ benefited from the same "blank / not yet" connotation. Wordle's daily ritual put colored squares and circles in front of millions of people who'd never noticed they existed.
• •Maru (○) in Japanese — In Japanese classrooms and forms, a circle (maru) means correct, and an X (batsu) means wrong. This is the opposite of Western convention, where ✓ means yes. Western visitors sometimes mark forms incorrectly because they assume ○ means "fill this in."

• •⚪ sits at U+26AAU+26AA in the Miscellaneous Symbols block. Official name: MEDIUM WHITE CIRCLEMEDIUM WHITE CIRCLE.
• •Common shortcodes: :white_circle::white_circle: on GitHub, Discord, and Slack.
• •For UI empty-states, prefer native HTML/CSS (e.g., an unstyled radio input) over relying on ⚪ as a character. Different platforms render ⚪ with different border weights and subtle color shifts.
• •The full circle set: ⚪ (U+26AAU+26AA), ⚫ (U+26ABU+26AB), 🔴 (U+1F534U+1F534), 🔵 (U+1F535U+1F535), 🟠 (U+1F7E0U+1F7E0), 🟡 (U+1F7E1U+1F7E1), 🟢 (U+1F7E2U+1F7E2), 🟣 (U+1F7E3U+1F7E3), 🟤 (U+1F7E4U+1F7E4), plus 🔘 (U+1F518U+1F518).

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