Keep quiet
A diamond, or two diamonds touching, reported to mean keep quiet.
Meaning
Dan Beard wrote in 1918 that a diamond “admonishes you to keep quiet, hold your tongue”. The National Cryptologic Museum’s sample sheet draws two diamonds touching at their points for “Keep quiet, day sleepers or babies”. Our drawing follows the museum’s pair.
Origin and history
The museum’s reason, sleeping workers or babies in the house, is the kind of detail that makes the Historic Graffiti Society doubt the longer lists of signs: in its opinion most sets contain signs no traveller would have needed.
Read next
- Next in Hobo symbolsJudge lives hereA spiral, reported to mean that a judge or magistrate lived at the house; a spiral in a circle was the court house.
- The same shape in Crystal and gemstone loreCitrineCitrine is yellow to orange quartz. Before modern gemology it was confused with topaz, so it has little lore of its own, and most citrine on sale today is amethyst that has been heated.
See also
Danger, Kind woman lives here, Food given here, Religious talk for a meal, Care if you are sick, Gentleman lives here.
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. 35
- Sample of Some Hobo Signs, National Cryptologic Museum, exhibit sheet (hobo-signs-definitions.pdf), National Security Agency, page 3
- Hobo Signs: Code of the Road?, 2 February 2020, updated 12 February 2022, The Historic Graffiti Society, Unnecessary & Confusing Signs
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from diamonds.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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