Leave quickly
A circle crossed by two arrows, reported to mean that a hobo should leave town quickly, usually because the police were looking.
Meaning
Dan Beard (1918) described a circle with two arrows across it as “a command to move on quickly”, a chalk sign “usually a warning that the constable or police are looking for them”, and a circle with a single arrow as a plain command to go. The National Cryptologic Museum’s sample sheet draws the circle with two arrows for “Leave quickly”, and its exhibit text says some signs told whether the police in town were friendly or that a hobo should keep moving.
Origin and history
The Boston article printed in 1908 advised householders to rub out the circle with a cross, the sign for food, and draw instead a circle with an arrow running out of it, which meant “Get away as quickly as possible”. Beard told householders in 1918 that they too could learn the signs and use them to their own advantage.
Read next
- Next in Hobo symbolsNothing doingA loosely drawn circle, reported to mean “nothing doing”: no use trying here or going this way.
- The same shape in Chinese zodiacFive elements (wu xing)Wood, fire, earth, metal and water: the five phases (五行 wǔxíng) of Chinese thought, which describe how things change rather than what they are made of. In the Chinese calendar each year takes the element of its heavenly stem, and the element follows the year’s last digit: years ending in 6 and 7, such as 2026 and 2027, are Fire years.
See also
Danger, Judge lives here, Hobo moniker, 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. II, fig. 6; ch. IV, fig. 32
- Sample of Some Hobo Signs, National Cryptologic Museum, exhibit sheet (hobo-signs-definitions.pdf), National Security Agency, page 1
- Signs of Tramp World: How They Chalk Upon Fences Advice to Their Fellow-Hobos, syndicated from Boston; Dakota Farmers’ Leader (Canton, S.D.), 13 March 1908, page 6, Library of Congress, Chronicling America
- Hobo Communications: A Brief History of Hobos and Their Signs, National Cryptologic Museum exhibit, 4 August 2021, National Security Agency
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from arrows or circles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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