Baby Angel

A cherished little one, or a literal angel. You send 👼 about someone small and loved: your kid, a friend's newborn, a christening photo. On Nativity and Christmas posts it simply means an angel. Unlike 😇, it isn't a wink about acting innocent.

The chubby winged child is a putto (an old Italian word for 'little boy', plural putti, now mostly an art term), a stock figure of Greco-Roman art; Cupid is often drawn in the same shape. On a Roman sarcophagus dated to the 3rd–4th century, putti pick grapes on a vine linked to Dionysus, the wine god. In early 15th-century Tuscany, artists revived putti for Christian works, and they became the winged babies of church ceilings.

What does it mean when someone sends you 👼?

Read the caption before you react. On a birth photo, 'she's here' or a name reveal, 👼 is pure delight. Beside 🦋, two dates, or the words angel baby, it marks a child lost to miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death. Some families also speak of an angel mom, or of a rainbow baby (a child born after a loss).

Not sure which? Look for a second date or 'gone too soon'. Answer a memorial 👼 quietly, in the family's own words. And if you lost a baby yourself, a friend's cheerful 👼 may sting; they most likely meant only welcome.