Guard: light skin tone

The King's Guard, the soldiers posted at Britain's royal palaces. The guardsmen are serving infantry from the Foot Guards regiments of the British Army. Their public face is Changing the Guard, a marching ceremony with a band in which the sentries on duty hand over to the next group. Tourists know them from the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, where they stand motionless in sentry boxes and famously do not react to anyone pulling faces at them.

The uniform is what makes the emoji readable at a glance: a red tunic, dark trousers and the bearskin, a cap of black fur well over a foot tall. Most platforms also draw a chin strap under the lip, which is how the real cap is worn. The emoji shows a generic guardsman; it does not pick out a regiment or a palace.

What does it mean when someone sends 💂?

Usually one of three things: London, 'on guard', or 'you're being strict'. With travel plans or a photo, it means Britain, London or the royal family, often beside 🇬🇧 or 👑. Around a coronation, jubilee or royal wedding it is simply the British-pageantry emoji. Pointed at you after you laid down a rule, it is gentle mockery: you are standing stiff as a palace sentry and nobody can make you crack.

Many people also use it as a plain guard, ignoring the ceremony: "💂 guarding the last slice", "on door duty tonight 💂", "I'm watching you 💂". That reading is light and protective. What it does not do well is signal a real security problem; the picture is pageantry, so a serious message about a break-in or a bouncer lands as a joke.

Where do the red coat and bearskin come from?

From the regiments raised to protect the monarch in person. A royal bodyguard has existed since Henry VII, and the oldest of today's Foot Guards regiments was raised in 1656 in Bruges, for Charles II while he was in exile. The guard still formally mounts at St James's Palace, with a detachment at Buckingham Palace, which is why the ceremony starts in one place and ends in the other. Canada's Ceremonial Guard in Ottawa and Denmark's Royal Life Guards wear a very similar scarlet-and-bearskin kit.

The hat is a trophy. Grenadiers, infantry originally trained to throw grenades, wore tall caps in several armies; after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 the British First Regiment of Foot Guards were renamed the Grenadier Guards and took up the bearskin of the French Imperial Guard grenadiers they had helped defeat. The other Foot Guards regiments adopted it later, and it became the emblem of the whole Guards division.