What ⧗ means
A filled hourglass shape for text, built for notation and design.
Unicode added it in 2002 with a large batch of mathematical shapes: triangles, bowties, brackets and their filled and outlined pairs. ⧗ is the solid version; is the outline. They carry no single fixed mathematical meaning; an author who needs an hourglass-shaped mark defines what it stands for. Because it is ordinary text, it takes the colour and size of the font around it, which is why people put it in usernames, bios, game-style status lines and minimalist designs as a quiet sign for time, a timer or "waiting".
The picture behind it is the sand glass: two glass bulbs joined by a narrow neck, sand running from top to bottom in a set time. A 1338 fresco in Siena, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good Government, shows one in a figure's hand. By the 17th century, European memento mori art ("remember you will die") used the hourglass as a sign that life runs out, which is why it still reads as "time is running out".
Neutral and plain: reads as time or waiting, never as a mood.
Some fonts lack it and show an empty box instead.
Part of collections
Don't confuse it with
3
Related characters
2
Worth knowing
- The Unicode name says "black" because type designers call a filled shape black and an outlined one white, whatever colour your screen shows.
Questions people ask
2Is ⧗ the same as the emoji?
No. is an emoji with colour artwork; ⧗ is a text symbol that follows your font's colour. Both show an hourglass.
Why do I see a box instead of ⧗?
Your font lacks it. Maths fonts such as Cambria Math or many system fallback fonts include it.
More like this
9
How to type or find ⧗
- Also called
- filled hourglass · solid hourglass
- Search it as
- hourglass symbol · hourglass text symbol · sand timer symbol · ⧗ · U+29D7
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⧗\29D7Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.