Wing Emoji

A single bird's wing in white and grey, slightly rotated. 🪽 is the emoji for flight, freedom, angels, and anything that soars. It does three jobs that used to require clumsy combinations of 🕊️, 🦅, and 👼.

The first job is literal flight and bird anatomy. Pair with 🦅 or 🐦 and it's just "wing." Use it in bird-photography, aviation, or nature posts and nothing else has to happen.

The second job is angelic and spiritual. 🪽 shows up in memorial posts as the emoji version of "got their wings." The "got their wings" phrasing comes partly from It's a Wonderful Life (misquoted, Clarence earns his wings after saving George) and partly from scripture on divine protection (Psalm 17:8, "hide me under the shadow of thy wings"). Theologically it's disputed, humans don't become angels in most Christian theology, but as a shared grief shorthand it's everywhere.

The third job is metaphorical freedom. "Spread your wings." "You give me wings." "Take flight." The wing as a symbol of growth, independence, and leaving the nest.

Added in Unicode 15.0 (September 2022) from a proposal by Jennifer Daniel, who chairs the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee. Before 🪽 existed, there was no dedicated emoji for a wing, which meant memorial and angel content had to use 🕊️ (which is really just the dove of peace) or 👼 (specifically a baby angel). 🪽 filled the largest gap in the bird-anatomy set.

On memorial TikTok and grief pages, 🪽 has become the default angel emoji within two years of release. "RIP 🪽" and "Earned her wings 🪽" are standard memorial captions. The neutrality of the design (a generic bird wing, not specifically angelic) makes it work across religious and secular grief equally well.

In tattoo and body-art accounts, 🪽 is shorthand for the aesthetic. Wings are among the most-tattooed images globally, and the emoji appears in tattoo appointment posts, flash-sheet captions, and aftercare content.

In fitness and motivational posts, 🪽 carries the "spread your wings" reading. "New chapter 🪽" after a job change, graduation, or move is a specific pattern, meaning 'independence' without saying it.

There's a small but real band / music use. Red Bull's decades-old "gives you wings" slogan, Aerosmith's "Angel)" iconography, Maroon 5's "Lucky Strike" wing imagery, all get 🪽 tagged in fan posts.

🪽 is poetic, not flirty. It says 'you elevate me,' not 'I want you.' In romantic contexts it's complimentary and sincere. For actual flirtation, most people reach for 😘 🫦 or 🔥 instead.

Wings are one of the most universal visual symbols humans make. Every major ancient civilization depicted at least one winged deity. Egyptian Isis is portrayed with protective wings that shelter the deceased in the afterlife. Greek Nike, the goddess of victory, is winged, the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre (c. 190 BC) is probably the most recognized wing sculpture in the Western canon. Hindu Garuda, the divine mount of Vishnu, has wings symbolizing strength and devotion. Christian, Jewish, and Islamic angels all have wings, though Islamic depictions are rarer because of prohibitions on figurative religious art.

Icarus is the opposing image: wings as hubris. Daedalus built wings of feather and wax for himself and his son to escape Crete. Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, and he fell into the sea. The story has been shorthand for ambition-punished-by-nature for 2,500 years.

In modern branding, the wing has been used by everyone from Red Bull ("gives you wings," since 1997) to Aston Martin (winged badge since 1927) to American Airlines. Red Bull's slogan even became a legal issue: after a US consumer sued claiming the drink hadn't literally grown him wings, the company settled for $13 million and changed the slogan in some markets to "Gives you wiiings."

Jennifer Daniel's 2021 proposal to Unicode cited exactly this cross-cultural weight: wings are arguably the most universal visual metaphor in human culture, and emoji had no dedicated character for them. The closest options were 🕊️ (locked to 'peace'), 👼 (a baby angel), and 🦅 (a whole eagle). 🪽 filled the gap when it shipped in September 2022.

Added in Unicode 15.0 (September 2022) under the official name "WING." Single code point: U+1FABDU+1FABD. Proposed by Jennifer Daniel of Google in September 2021. Daniel chairs the Emoji Subcommittee of the Unicode Technical Committee and has authored dozens of emoji proposals. Approved alongside the shaking face (🫨), jellyfish (🪼), and moose (🫎) in the same release.

Wings carry different specific meanings across cultures, but the core is remarkably stable. In Christianity, wings belong to angels (divine messengers) and the Holy Spirit (often shown as a winged dove at Jesus's baptism). In Greek mythology, wings mean either victory (Nike) or fatal ambition (Icarus), two almost-opposite readings. In Hindu tradition, wings belong to Garuda (strength, protection, devotion). In Egyptian religion, wings belong to Isis (motherly protection) and occasionally to Ma'at and Nephthys. In Indigenous American traditions, wings, especially eagle wings, are ceremonial and sacred.

Modern use in the English-speaking world tends to blend the angel reading with the freedom reading. "Spread your wings" in a career coaching post and "she got her wings" in a memorial post are the same emoji doing very different symbolic work.

• •Jennifer Daniel, Google's emoji design lead and chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, proposed 🪽 in 2021. She cited the universal cultural significance of wings across civilizations.
• •Red Bull's 'gives you wings' slogan settled a class-action suit for roughly $13 million after a US customer argued the tagline implied a literal physical result.
• •The Winged Victory of Samothrace (c. 190 BC), depicting the goddess Nike on a ship's prow, has stood at the top of the Louvre's Daru staircase since 1884 and is one of the most photographed sculptures in the world.
• •Before 🪽 existed (before 2022), people combined 🕊️, 🦅, or 👼 to express 'wings.' Unicode 15.0 finally gave them their own character.
• •'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings' is from the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. The phrase is the direct source of the modern memorial phrasing 'she got her wings.'
• •Wings are among the most popular tattoo designs globally. The emoji became tattoo-community shorthand within months of release.
• •Icarus's wings in Greek myth were made of feathers and wax. The story is roughly 2,500 years old and still the default warning against hubris in Western literature.
• •In Hindu tradition, Garuda, the winged mount of Vishnu, is so associated with protection that Garuda Indonesia is the national airline of Indonesia.

• •Red Bull's 'Gives You Wings' slogan (1997) is the most recognized wing metaphor in modern advertising. A class-action lawsuit over the literal promise of wings cost the company roughly $13 million and a slogan tweak in some markets.
• •Winged Victory of Samothrace (c. 190 BC) at the top of the Louvre's Daru staircase is one of the most photographed sculptures in the world. It's a Greek Nike alighting on a ship's prow, commemorating a naval victory.
• •'It's a Wonderful Life' (1946) popularized "every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings." This is the specific source of the 'got their wings' phrasing in modern memorial usage, though the film's angel earned his wings by saving George Bailey, not by dying.
• •Icarus in Greek mythology is the single most reused wing metaphor in Western literature. "Flew too close to the sun" is the 2,500-year-old version of 'you should have known better.'

• •Single code point: U+1FABDU+1FABD. No variation selector or ZWJ required.
• •No skin tone or gender variants.
• •Shortcodes: :wing::wing: on most platforms (where supported).
• •Shipped with Unicode 15.0 (September 2022). Apple support arrived in iOS 16.4 (March 2023). Older devices show tofu.

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