Turn your words into pure symbols
Wingdings is the internet’s favorite accidental secret code. It is not a language at all, just a font where every letter is replaced by a little picture: hands, faces, arrows, stars, and bombs. Type a word into our Wingdings translator and watch it turn into a row of mysterious glyphs. The tool works both ways, so you can encode English into Wingdings and decode Wingdings back into English. Copy your result with one click and paste it into messages, bios, and captions. No signup, no download, no cost.
How to use the Wingdings translator
- Type or paste your text into the English box.
- Click translate to see it converted into Wingdings symbols instantly.
- Flip the direction to decode Wingdings symbols back into readable English.
- Use the copy button to grab your symbols for pasting anywhere.
One tip: the symbols are characters, not images, so they copy and paste like normal text. They may look slightly different on different phones and apps.
The Wingdings a to z chart
Wingdings treats capitals and lowercase as two different sets, so there are 52 symbols to play with. Here is the full chart, with a short description of each glyph.
Capitals: A becomes ✌ (victory hand), B becomes 🗯 (turned OK hand), C becomes 👍 (thumbs up), D becomes 👎 (thumbs down), E becomes ☜ (hand pointing left), F becomes ☞ (hand pointing right), G becomes ☝ (hand pointing up), H becomes 🕗 (hand pointing down), I becomes 🖐 (raised hand), J becomes ☺ (smiling face), K becomes 😐 (neutral face), L becomes ☹ (frowning face), M becomes 💣 (bomb), N becomes 👱 (skull and crossbones), O becomes 🏳 (white flag), P becomes 🏱 (black pennant), Q becomes ✈ (airplane), R becomes ☼ (sun), S becomes 🌞 (water droplet), T becomes ❄ (snowflake), U becomes 🕦 (simple cross), V becomes ✞ (shadowed cross), W becomes 🕨 (Celtic cross), X becomes ✠ (Maltese cross), Y becomes ✡ (Star of David), Z becomes ☪ (star and crescent).
Lowercase: a becomes ☿ (Cancer), b becomes ♀ (Leo), c becomes ♁ (Virgo), d becomes ♂ (Libra), e becomes ♃ (Scorpio), f becomes ♄ (Sagittarius), g becomes ♅ (Capricorn), h becomes ♆ (Aquarius), i becomes ♇ (Pisces), j becomes 🝐 (script flourish), k becomes 🝕 (swash flourish), l becomes ⚫ (black circle), m becomes 🗾 (shadowed circle), n becomes ◼ (black square), o becomes 🞏 (white square), p becomes 🞐 (bold white square), q becomes ❑ (lower shadowed square), r becomes ❒ (upper shadowed square), s becomes 🞟 (small lozenge), t becomes ⧫ (black lozenge), u becomes ◆ (black diamond), v becomes ❦ (diamond with X), w becomes 🞙 (small diamond), x becomes ⌧ (X in a box), y becomes ⬹ (arrow in a box), and z becomes ⌘ (the famous command key symbol). The tool handles all of this for you, so there is no memorizing required.
The strange true story of Wingdings
Wingdings was designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes and released by Microsoft in 1990 as a font of decorative icons, or dingbats. Nobody expected it to become a code. But people quickly noticed that typing normal words produced spooky-looking symbol strings, and the mystery took on a life of its own.
The most famous incident involved the letters N, Y, and C. Typed in Wingdings, “NYC” renders as a skull, a Star of David, and a thumbs up. When this spread in the early 1990s, some readers accused Microsoft of hiding an antisemitic message. Microsoft denied it completely, calling it a pure coincidence of the symbol layout. The story stuck anyway, and “type NYC in Wingdings” became one of the internet’s first viral typography legends.
Wingdings kept popping up in pop culture. In the game Undertale, the mysterious character W. D. Gaster speaks entirely in Wingdings, which fans treat as the voice of someone who fell out of reality. Microsoft later released Wingdings 2 and Wingdings 3, which are mostly arrows and interface symbols, but the original remains the icon.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wingdings a real language?
No. Wingdings is a symbol font, not a language. Each letter is swapped for a picture, and there is no grammar, vocabulary, or meaning beyond the substitution. That is exactly why it works so well as a playful code.
Why do my Wingdings look different on my phone?
The symbols are Unicode characters, and every device draws them with its own emoji and symbol style. The meaning is identical everywhere, but the artwork varies between Apple, Android, and Windows.
Can I really decode Wingdings back to English?
Yes, as long as the symbols came from the standard Wingdings mapping. Paste the symbols into our tool, flip the direction, and you get the original text back. Random symbol strings that were never Wingdings will decode to gibberish, which is a fun test in itself.
What is the difference between Wingdings, Wingdings 2, and Wingdings 3?
The original Wingdings is the famous one with hands, faces, and the NYC legend. Wingdings 2 and 3 are later Microsoft fonts focused on arrows, bullets, and interface icons. Our translator uses the original Wingdings mapping.
Is Wingdings the same as Webdings?
Close cousins, not twins. Webdings is another Microsoft symbol font with a web and travel theme. They share the dingbat idea but map letters to different pictures.
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