What Does It Mean in Morse Code? A Lookup Guide to Every Signal

How to read what a Morse code message means

To work out what a Morse code message means, split it into characters at the spaces, look each one up, then check whether the letters spell a word or a code.

1. Treat every single space as the end of one character and a forward slash (or a wider gap in sound) as the end of a word.
2. Count dots and dashes exactly. One dot is E, one dash is T; dot-dash is A, dash-dot is N, so a miscount changes the letter.
3. Look each character up in the table below. Anything that matches nothing is either mistyped or a prosign sent without letter gaps.
4. Read the letters together. Two or three letters that are not a word are usually an abbreviation, such as CQ, DE, TU or 73.
5. If the result still makes no sense, check the prosign table: AR, SK, BT and KN carry a procedural meaning, not a spelling.

Written Morse normally uses a period for a dot and a hyphen for a dash. Watch for autocorrect: three periods often become one ellipsis character, and two hyphens become an em dash, which some decoders then misread.

Morse code letter and number meanings

Every letter A–Z and digit 0–9 has one fixed pattern in International Morse Code, so a single character always means the same thing regardless of who sent it. The most frequent letters in English got the shortest patterns, which is why E is a single dot and T a single dash.

Digits are always five symbols long, which makes them easy to spot inside a message. Punctuation is longer still: the period is .-.-.-, the comma --..--, the question mark ..--.., the slash -..-., the equals sign -...-, the plus sign .-.-. and the at sign (.--.-.). The full character chart on this site also lists accented letters and the bracket codes.

What does SOS mean in Morse code?

SOS in Morse code means "distress, send help," and it is sent as one unbroken signal: three dots, three dashes, three dots, written ...---... with no gaps between the letters. Because the letters run together, SOS is technically a prosign rather than the three separate letters S, O and S, and that continuous rhythm is exactly what makes it easy to recognize and hard to misread through noise.

The letters never stood for words. Germany wrote the signal into its national radio regulations on 1 April 1905, and the first International Radiotelegraph Convention, signed on 3 November 1906, made it the worldwide distress call from 1 July 1908.

It replaced CQD, the distress call that the Marconi company had used on its ships since 1 February 1904; the Titanic's operators sent both CQD and SOS in April 1912. "Save our souls" and "save our ship" are backronyms that readers attached later.

For maritime radio, the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System took over in 1999, but SOS is still recognized as a distress signal in any medium: a flashlight, a mirror, a whistle, or taps on a wall.

What do 73 and 88 mean in Morse code?

In Morse code, 73 means "best regards" and 88 means "love and kisses"; both are sign-offs that amateur radio operators send at the end of a contact. They come from the 92 Code, a list of numbered shorthand phrases that Western Union adopted in 1859 so telegraph operators could send common sentences as two digits.

An early telegraph manual lists 73 as "I wish you well" in American use and "best regards" in British use, and that second meaning is the one hams kept. Sent in Morse, 73 is --... ...-- and 88 is ---.. ---.. (the digit 8 twice). Operators treat each as a complete phrase, so "73s" with an added S is considered a mistake, like saying "best regardses."

If someone sends you 73, the normal reply is 73 back. Sending 88 to a stranger is not rude, but it is unusual; it belongs to contacts where the operators know each other.

Morse code prosigns and what they mean

Morse code prosigns are procedural signals that tell the other operator what is happening in the contact, such as "end of message" or "wait," and each one is sent as a single run-together pattern with no gap between its letters. In print they appear with an overline or in angle brackets, so <AR> and AR with a line over it are the same thing. The official definitions sit in ITU-R M.1677, the international Morse standard, with a few extra ones used in ARRL message handling.

A prosign and an abbreviation can share the same letters and differ only in the gaps, which is why a translator that inserts letter spaces will show "AR" or "+" where an operator heard "end of message."

Common Morse code abbreviations

Abbreviations are ordinary letters sent with normal letter spacing, and most of them are shortened English words or Q-codes rather than procedural signals. A translator decodes them correctly as letters; this table turns the letters into their meaning.

Context decides between meanings. SK sent with letter gaps is an abbreviation for silent key; SK run together is the prosign that ends a contact.

What dots, dashes, spaces and slashes mean in Morse code

The dots, dashes and gaps in Morse code are all measured in one unit of time, and the length of each gap is what separates symbols, letters and words. A single space in written Morse is a letter gap and a forward slash is a word gap; in sound, those gaps are three units and seven units long.

Two things trip people up. First, the slash is both a separator in most translators and a real Morse character (-..-.), so a decoder that does not expect "/" as a separator may translate it as a symbol. Second, a "#" in a translator's output marks a pattern it could not match, which is usually a typo, a prosign, or a character outside the standard set.

Morse code meanings people look up most

These are the exact strings people search for with "what does ___ mean in Morse code," with the meaning of each.

If your string is not here, split it at the spaces and look each character up in the letter table, or paste the whole thing into the translator.

FAQ

Does SOS stand for "save our souls"?

No. SOS was chosen in 1905–1906 because its nine-element rhythm is easy to send and recognize, and "save our souls" was attached to it afterwards as a backronym.

What is the difference between a prosign and an abbreviation?

A prosign is sent as one continuous pattern with no gap between its letters, while an abbreviation is sent as separate letters with normal spacing. AR run together means "end of message"; A then R with a gap is just two letters.

What does "/" mean in Morse code?

In written Morse, "/" separates words, so .... .. / - .... . .-. . reads HI THERE. The slash also exists as its own character, -..-., so check which convention your decoder expects.

What should I reply when someone sends 73?

Reply with 73. It means "best regards" and closes the contact politely; 88 is reserved for people you know well.

Why does a translator show "#" or random letters for part of my message?

A "#" means the pattern matched no character, and stray letters often come from a prosign that was decoded as spaced letters. Check the prosign table for AR, SK, BT and KN first.