Purple square

A solid purple tile that stands for colour, not emotion. It belongs to the set of coloured squares and circles added in 2019 so emoji finally had a full palette of plain shapes. Until then there were only black and white squares and a handful of circles, which made colour charts and pixel pictures impossible.

That palette is what 🟪 is for. Lined up with other squares it becomes a pixel: people draw mosaics, flags, hearts and game characters row by row. In front of a list item, a calendar entry or a chart legend it is a colour tag, and the list's key tells you what purple means there. In a reply it simply says 'purple': the colour of a football or basketball kit, a lavender-themed room, a purple-haired character, the purple on the bisexual pride flag, or the ribbon colour of several awareness campaigns.

Purple also carries its old associations, royalty, luxury and a touch of magic or mystery, so the square turns up decorating anything that wants to look regal or witchy. Fans of the Korean band BTS treat purple as their colour too, though they mostly say it with 💜, keeping 🟪 for borders and headers.

What does it mean when someone sends 🟪?

Usually 'this one is purple', or one tile in a pattern. In a grid of coloured squares it is a puzzle result: in the New York Times word game Connections, players post their guesses as rows of 🟨🟩🟦🟪, and purple is the hardest of the four groups, so a clean 🟪🟪🟪🟪 line is a quiet brag. In a long block of squares it is a pixel. Under a photo or a team post it means 'love the purple' or 'these are my colours'.

A lone 🟪 with no words rarely hides a message. It is most often a colour choice, a stray from the emoji palette, or a nudge toward something purple you were just discussing. Look at the conversation before you look for a code, and if you use it as a label yourself, add a word so nobody has to guess what purple stands for.