Wings spread mid-flutter, the butterfly emoji stands for 'butterflies in your stomach' — that fluttery, nervous-excited crush feeling. It also stands for transformation and glow-ups, caterpillar-to-butterfly being the internet's favorite metaphor for change, and gets used purely for its soft, aesthetic visual appeal.
What 🦋 means
This butterfly appears full-length, its wings a bright sky blue outlined in a deeper blue or black, with a blackish body and thorax and thin, light-colored antennae.
The 🦋 Butterfly emoji refers to the Blue Morpho, which is one of the largest butterfly species. It signifies beauty, nature, transformation, fruit-bearing change, freedom, fragility, and a short life span.
How and when to use it
- If you're posting something that revolves around a central theme of change and transformation, you can use 🦋 in such post captions. For instance, "Change is always good 🦋" can be a quote for a physical transformation picture of yours.
- You can also use 🦋 just to add some beauty, color, and a sense of delicacy/fragility to your post caption. For example, if you're posting a picture of something delicate and beautiful, 🦋 would be a great addition to that caption.
- Use 🦋 while sharing butterfly pictures, videos or even memes.
- If you're talking to your bestie about how one small change of decision led to a mammoth of a transformation, you can use 🦋 in such contexts; basically indicating the 'butterfly effect'.
- Are you heading to a butterfly park with your kids or your friends? Are you posting social media stories or pictures of the same? Then, use 🦋 in such posts/stories!
Other Names
- 🦋 Blue Morpho
- 🦋 Insect
- 🦋 Colorful Insect
- 🦋 Butterfly Wings
- 🦋 Butterfly Effect
- 🦋 Monarch Butterfly
- 🦋 Mrs and Miss Butterfly (nostalgic yet?)
🦋 in real conversations
What does 🦋 mean from a girl?
Butterflies in the stomach — that fluttery, nervous-excited feeling a crush gives you. 'He texted first 🦋' is the classic use. It also shows up for a glow-up, marking a big, positive change.
What does 🦋 mean in texting?
Nerves and excitement tangled together, usually about someone new. It also stands for transformation — leaving a rough chapter behind and coming out the other side better, the caterpillar-to-butterfly arc in one emoji.
Does 🦋 always mean a crush?
Not always — plenty of use is just aesthetic, decorating a caption or profile with nothing romantic attached. But paired with a name or a 'so...' opener, it's shorthand for stomach-flipping attraction.
The lowdown
- Category
- Animals & Nature › animal-bug
- Codepoints
U+1F98B- Emoji version
- Emoji 3.0
- Shortcodes
:butterfly:- Keywords
- butterfly, insect, pretty
How it looks across platforms
Seeing a blank box instead of the emoji somewhere? Here's why that happens. Curious why the designs above don't match to begin with? Here's why that happens too.
Pairs well with
Tap any combo to copy the whole thing.
⚡ Quick round
Which joined the keyboard first — 🦋 Butterfly or 🤮 Face Vomiting?
Runs with a crowd
🦋 keeps company in aesthetic emojis and animal emojis and cute emojis and sparkle emojis — tap-to-copy sets for when one emoji isn't enough.