Word.ws English Dictionary

black square

black square noun: a predominantly black image, posted by users of social media, as a demonstration of support for awareness and protest campaigns, particularly those related to racism and police brutality.

Noun

black square (plural black squares)

  1. A predominantly black image, posted by users of social media, as a demonstration of support for awareness and protest campaigns, particularly those related to racism and police brutality.
    • Instagram is filling up with black squares in the latest movement to protest against racial inequality and police brutality.2020 June 2, Andrew Griffin, “Blackout Tuesday: What do Instagram black squares mean – and how can you take part?”, in The Independent (article), archived from the original on 12 Feb 2025
    • Instagram users are flooding the platform with black squares in support of black victims of police violence as part of a Blackout Tuesday protest.2020 June 2, Jessica Bursztynsky, Sarah Whitten, “Instagram users flood the app with millions of Blackout Tuesday posts”, in CNBC (article), archived from the original on 02 Jun 2020
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see black, square, for example, ■.

Forms of black square

pluralblack squares

Origin of black square

From black + square.

Questions about black square

What does black square mean?
Black square means a predominantly black image, posted by users of social media, as a demonstration of support for awareness and protest campaigns, particularly those related to racism and police brutality.
What part of speech is black square?
Black square is a noun.
What is the plural of black square?
The plural of black square is black squares.

Words near black square in the dictionary

  1. Black Springs
  2. black spruce
  3. black spruces
  4. black squall
  5. black squalls
  6. black square
  7. black squares
  8. Black Stars
  9. black start
  10. black starts
  11. black stork

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black square (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “black square.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black_square. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.