🦋 Butterfly

Unicode lists 🦋 Butterfly among the bugs in the Animals & Nature group. In practice it comes up around insect and pretty.

Worth knowing: 🦋 carries a second, informal reading. In chats it often means something other than the literal picture – our overview of double meaning emojis explains which one.

🦋 fits messaging apps, social networks and anywhere a short visual cue helps. On SmileyZone it is filed under Animals and Nature. Added in 2016 with Emoji 3.0, it displays correctly on every up-to-date system. Its code point is U+1F98B.

• A single 🦋 is often enough to set the tone.
• Fits messages about insect and pretty.
• Often seen near 🐛 Bug, 🐌 Snail and 🐜 Ant.

The butterfly stands almost everywhere for transformation. In ancient Greece psyche meant both soul and butterfly. In China two butterflies signal faithful love, after the legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai.

In Mexico the arrival of the monarchs coincides with Día de los Muertos, and they are taken to be the returning souls of the dead. In Japan, by contrast, a single butterfly can mean the spirit of someone who has died.

• 🦋🪲 – Butterfly and Beetle
• 🦋🪳 – Butterfly with Cockroach
• 🦋🕷️ – Butterfly plus Spider
• 🦋🦂 – Butterfly and Scorpion
• 🦋🐛 – Butterfly with Bug
• 🦋🕸️ – Butterfly plus Spider Web
• 🦋🐞 – Butterfly and Lady Beetle
• 🦋🐝 – Butterfly with Honeybee

Easy to mix up with 🐛 Bug, 🐌 Snail or 🐜 Ant. They sit in the same Unicode subgroup and look similar at small sizes, so it is worth checking the name before sending.