Flag: Lithuania

It stands for Lithuania or a Lithuanian connection.

Lithuania is the largest and southernmost of the three Baltic states, on the Baltic Sea between Latvia, Belarus, Poland and Russia's Kaliningrad region. Its capital is Vilnius, it belongs to the European Union and NATO, and its language, Lithuanian, is prized by linguists as one of the most old-fashioned living Indo-European languages. Lithuanians call the flag the trispalvė, "the tricolour".

The stripes are yellow on top, green in the middle, red at the bottom. The colours are usually explained as yellow for the sun, light and prosperity, green for the forests, nature and hope, and red for the earth, courage and the blood shed for the country.

The tricolour was adopted in 1918, when Lithuania declared independence after the First World War. Under Soviet rule it was banned, and flying it could get you arrested. It came back in 1988, during the independence movement, and became the state flag again when Lithuania restored its independence in March 1990, the first Soviet republic to do so.

What does it mean when someone sends 🇱🇹?

Usually a label: Lithuanian, in Lithuania, or cheering for Lithuania.

The commonest place to meet it is a profile bio, where it says "I'm Lithuanian" or "I live here", often next to a second flag for the country someone has moved to. Lithuania has a large diaspora, so a 🇱🇹 in a bio from London, Dublin, Oslo or Chicago is ordinary.

In sport the flag belongs to basketball, which is the national passion in a way football is elsewhere. During EuroBasket, the World Cup or the Olympics the flag swarms posts from Lithuanian fans, usually with 🏀 or a player's name. You will also see it beside 🇱🇻 and 🇪🇪 when the three Baltic countries act together, and beside 🇺🇦 in posts supporting Ukraine, which Lithuania has backed strongly since 2022.

A flag on its own carries no feeling of its own. If someone sends you just 🇱🇹, read the words around it: it is a place, a team, a heritage or a topic, not a mood.