Wide-Headed Upwards Light Barb Arrow

Use a Unicode-aware character picker or a code escape in source code.

On a desktop, open the system character picker or your app’s Unicode hexadecimal input; in source code, use that language’s Unicode escape for U+1F861. The exact keystroke depends on the operating system and app.

The Wingdings 3 font names this style barb1up. That font label is not a portable Unicode input method: a font-mapped character can change when the text moves to another system. Use the Unicode character if the text must survive a change of font or device.

What does this upward arrow mean?

It signals upward direction or movement, and can mark an increase.

The arrow idea predates this exact character: north-pointing arrows on maps are attested by the beginning of the 15th century. A 1737 engineering diagram used arrows for water flow and the rotation of a waterwheel.

The computer-era purpose was to bring a Wingdings 3 arrow style into standard text, not to add a new message meaning. The Unicode proposal placed the light-barb style alongside medium-, heavy-, and very-heavy-barb versions.