Danger
A rectangle with a dot in the middle, reported to mean danger, often a dangerous man.
Meaning
Dan Beard (1918) described a parallelogram with a dot in the centre as a sign of danger of some kind, “usually means a dangerous man”. The National Cryptologic Museum’s sample sheet draws the rectangle with a dot for “Danger”, the same rectangle inside a second box for “Dangerous place”, and a circle with a dot beside a rectangle with a dot for “Dangerous man lives here”.
Origin and history
Beard knew a second form, a circle with a dot in the centre, which he said meant the same among tramps. He left it out of his book because Baden-Powell’s Scout book already used that mark for “I have gone home”, and he did not want the two to be confused. He also told householders who found the “easy mark” on their house to rub it out and draw the danger mark in its place.
Read next
See also
Leave quickly, Dog here, Keep quiet, Kind woman lives here, Food given here, Religious talk for a meal.
Sources
- The American Boys’ Book of Signs, Signals and Symbols, Dan Beard, J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1918 (Cornell scan on the Internet Archive), Internet Archive, ch. IV, fig. 43
- Sample of Some Hobo Signs, National Cryptologic Museum, exhibit sheet (hobo-signs-definitions.pdf), National Security Agency, page 2
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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