💜 Purple Heart
emoji
A digital purple-colored heart expressing types of affection
What does the Purple Heart emoji 💜 mean?
The Purple Heart emoji (💜) is a representation of the conventional symbol for a heart, colored purple and used in electronic communication to convey (like other colored heart emoji) love, affection, sympathy, etc. It is closely associated with the massively popular K-pop group BTS and their fandom (known as ARMY). In general, the emoji does not have any specific, set meaning that one should avoid using wrong or offensively.
Examples of the Purple Heart emoji 💜
✨ I PURPLE YOU BTS 💜 ALWAYS AND FOREVER IN MY HEART ❤️✨ 💜✨ 💜✨ 💜✨ 💜✨ 💜✨ 💜✨ 💜
—@rivera.benilda, Threads, 21 Oct. 2024
Ladies and Gentlemen, the NBA is back tonight. / LeBron James plays Basketball tonight. Go Lakers 💜💛 / #LakersNation
—I’m so sorry 😢 sending you all my love 💜💜
—Remember to check in on: the quiet friend, the strong friend, and the always there for you friend. It could make all the difference. 💜
—Happy Veterans Day 💜 Honoring All Who Served 🇺🇸
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Where does the Purple Heart emoji 💜 come from?
The Purple Heart emoji 💜 first appeared as part of Unicode 6.0, a 2010 update to the universal text and character encoding standard maintained by the nonprofit organization Unicode. It is a purple-colored version of the Red Heart emoji, ❤️, which is based on non-colored digital heart symbols originating in Japanese technology in the late 1980s and 1990s.
In 2016, singer Kim Tae-hyung, who goes by the stage name V and is a member of the boy band BTS, coined the phrase I purple you _as an expression of his love for fans. He chose purple because violet is the bottom color of the rainbow, and to him this represents eternal love. Since then, the Purple Heart emoji 💜 has become widely connected to BTS and its fans, appearing alongside the expression _I purple you and its Korean equivalent, transliterated as borahae.
How is the Purple Heart emoji 💜 used?
The Purple Heart emoji 💜 is one of 12 colored heart emoji (and there are other emoji that incorporate the heart symbol in some way), which are often used in combination together: Red Heart ❤️, Pink Heart 🩷, Orange Heart 🧡, Yellow Heart 💛, Green Heart 💚, Blue Heart 💙, Light Blue Heart 🩵, Brown Heart 🤎, Black Heart 🖤, Grey Heart 🩶, and White Heart 🤍 .
Despite nuances in their use based on color, all of the heart emoji are used extensively across digital communication in similar, wide-ranging ways to convey various forms of affection and positive emotions and behaviors (such as gratitude, happiness, and showing support). The Purple Heart emoji 💜 is used somewhat less for direct expressions of romantic or familial love and affection than the Red Heart ❤️ and Pink Heart 🩷 emoji are.
Notable uses of the Purple Heart emoji 💜 include content in support of the K-pop group BTS and their fandom, as well as the United States military (especially veterans decorated with the Purple Heart medal). It is used in other idiosyncratic ways to add emphasis in messages about people and things connected in some way to the color purple and its symbolism, from sports teams to social causes to fashion.
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