While surfing the internet (as well as in the offline world), we come across a lot of symbols. Some of them are common, but for others, you've probably wondered what a particular symbol means more than once.
Thankfully, the internet has many symbol identifier resources to help. We'll show you how to find out a symbol's meaning using a variety of methods.
1. Identify Symbols Using Symbols.com
The aptly named Symbols.com is a great place to start your symbol search. Along with featured picks and categories on the homepage, you can use its symbol search engine to find what you're looking for. Just type in a query at the top, and you'll see symbols that match it.
That's great if you want to find a symbol by text (for example, looking up the symbol for "kosher"). But in many cases, you'll see a symbol and wonder what its meaning is. Thankfully, the site offers other ways to identify a symbol.
At the bottom-left of the page, you'll see the Graphical Index section. This allows you to search for a symbol based on its characteristics. It provides a few simple dropdown boxes allowing you to specify whether the shape is open or closed, if it has colors, whether the lines are curved or straight, and similar.
Input as much information as you know, then click Search to look up symbols that match your criteria. If this doesn't help you find what you're looking for, you can use the Symbol categories to browse by groupings like Currency signs, Warning symbols, and others.
If that fails, you can search alphabetically using the letters at the top of the screen. If you're not looking for anything in particular, the Random Entry link can help you learn something new.
This website is part of a network called STANDS4 that helps you look up lots of other information. See the links at the bottom to visit similar sites for finding info on ZIP codes, common phrases, rhymes, and more.
2. Draw a Symbol to Find Out Its Meaning
If you're puzzled by a symbol you saw offline, it makes more sense to find the symbol by a picture. You'll find several sites that offer the functionality to draw a symbol and find out what it means.
One of these is Shapecatcher. Simply draw the symbol you want to look up using your mouse or touchscreen and click the Recognize button. The service will return symbols that match your drawing.
If you don't see a match, draw it again and give it another try. The site only uses free Unicode fonts, so it might not have every possible symbol. For an alternative, try Detexify. It's focused on LaTeX symbols, but is still generally useful and will point you in the right direction of the symbol.
3. Search Symbols With Google
If you come across an unfamiliar icon while you're browsing the web, you don't have to worry about looking it up on a symbol identifier site. Simply run a symbol search with Google, and you should have your answer within seconds.
In Chrome, along with most other browsers, you can easily search Google for any text. Simply highlight it on the page, right-click, and choose Search Google for "[term]". This will open a new tab with a Google search for what you highlighted. If your browser doesn't have this for some reason, you can simply copy the symbol like you would any other text and paste it into Google on a new tab.
Either way, Google should point you in the right direction to find the meaning of that symbol. You'll be able to learn all about it on resources like Wikipedia.
4. Browse a List of Symbols
Unicode (the standard for text encoding) supports a number of common symbols, which is how they can appear like standard text. While they don't have dedicated keys on a standard keyboard, you can use several methods to type foreign characters instead.
If you couldn't find the symbol you're looking for using any of the above methods, you might be able to find it by browsing through all the symbols that Unicode supports. Have a look at Compart's list of "other symbol" Unicode characters and you might find the one you're interested in. If you prefer an alternative, check out the Unicode Character Table.
Of course, not all symbols are supported in Unicode. Road signs, religious symbols, and everyday consumer symbols aren't part of it. You may need to dig into Wikipedia's list of symbols page for those kinds of icons, or see Ancient-Symbols's list of symbols for less techy ones.
5. Learn What Emoji Symbols Mean
While you could argue they're not technically symbols, emojis often pose a point of confusion for people. After all, there are hundreds of emojis to keep track of, their designs are different across platforms, and many have multiple meanings. New emojis pop up all the time, making them like an entire extra language to keep track of.
First, we recommend reviewing our emoji face meanings guide. This will get you up to speed on some of the most common ones.
If you still have questions about emoji symbols, have a look at Emojipedia. Here you can search for a specific emoji, browse by categories, and read up on emoji news. Each emoji's page tells you not only what its official meaning is, but what it's commonly used for.
6. Utilize a Stock Ticker Symbol Finder
We round out our discussion of discovering symbol meanings by mentioning financial symbols. They're obviously different than the symbols mentioned above, but they're still a type of symbol you may want to look up.
MarketWatch is one of the best ways to check stock prices online, and it offers a handy symbol lookup tool. If you know the symbol you're interested in, enter it to see details on that company. If you're not sure what it is, enter a company name and you'll see matches for it.
Once you've landed on a company's page, you can see all kinds of data such as trends, news, and competitors.
Learn What Any Symbol Means Easily
Now you know where to turn whenever you come across an unfamiliar symbol. Whether you make a quick Google search or draw a symbol you saw offline, you don't have to guess what these icons mean any longer.
Meanwhile, a lot of platforms and services have their own symbols that you should also know about.
