Horizontal traffic light emoji meaning

The horizontal traffic light emoji shows a rectangular-shaped traffic signal with three colored lights—green, yellow, and red—arranged in a horizontal line. It represents the concept of controlling traffic and is commonly associated with decision-making, safety, or moments of caution. This emoji can be used to talk about progress (green for go), hesitation or waiting (yellow for caution), and stopping (red for halt). While it is often used in discussions about road signals and safety rules, it can also represent metaphorical situations in life, such as making choices, addressing changes, or highlighting the importance of taking a pause before moving forward.

The horizontal traffic light emoji was approved in Unicode 6.0 and added in Emoji 1.0, see related proposal L2/09026