What is "skull and crossbones"

Skull \Skull\, n. [OE. skulle, sculle, scolle; akin to Scot. skull, skoll, a bowl, Sw. skalle skull, skal a shell, and E. scale; cf. G. hirnschale, Dan. hierneskal. Cf. Scale of a balance.]

1. (Anat.) The skeleton of the head of a vertebrate animal, including the brain case, or cranium, and the bones and cartilages of the face and mouth. See Illusts. of Carnivora, of Facial angles under Facial, and of Skeleton, in Appendix.

   Note: In many fishes the skull is almost wholly cartilaginous but in the higher vertebrates it is more or less completely ossified, several bones are developed in the face, and the cranium is made up, wholly or partially, of bony plates arranged in three segments, the frontal, parietal, and occipital, and usually closely united in the adult.

2. The head or brain; the seat of intelligence; mind.

   Skulls that can not teach, and will not learn.
   --Cowper.

3. A covering for the head; a skullcap. [Obs. & R.]

   Let me put on my skull first.
   --Beau. & Fl.

4. A sort of oar. See Scull.

   Skull and crossbones, a symbol of death. See Crossbones.

alt. An outline of a human skull and two crossed bones; a symbol of death traditionally used on the Jolly Roger, but now used as a warning on poisons. n. An outline of a human skull and two crossed bones; a symbol of death traditionally used on the Jolly Roger, but now used as a warning on poisons.

n. emblem warning of danger or death

Skull and crossbones is a symbol of a human skull with two long bones crossed below it. It is used in several contexts:

• Skull and crossbones (symbol), as a symbol of death and especially as a memento mori on tombstones, a warning symbol of poisonous substances and danger
• Skull and crossbones (military), in variations used by several military forces
• Skull and crossbones (fraternities and sports), used also by sororities and secret societies
• Skull and crossbones (Spanish cemetery) "campo santo", used to mark the entrances to cemeteries
• Unicode represents the symbol "☠" in its Miscellaneous Symbols block.
• Skull and crossbones are sometimes shown on a crucifix, referring to Golgotha or Adam's skull.

Variations on the skull and crossbones have been used by several military forces. The largest is on the "Jolly Roger" flags used by submarines.

The skull and crossbones was a common fraternal motif as a symbol of mortality and warning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The symbol was adopted, for various reasons, by many sporting teams, clubs and societies in both America and Europe.

Actual skulls and bones were long used to mark the entrances to Spanish cemeteries (campo santo). The practice, dating back many centuries, led to the symbol eventually becoming associated with the concept of death. Some crucifixes feature a skull and crossbones beneath the corpus (the depiction of Jesus' body), in reference to a legend that the place of the crucifixion was also the burial place of Adam or, more likely, in reference to the New Testament statement (King James Version: Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, and John 19:17) that the place of his crucifixion was called " Golgotha" (tr. "the Place of a Skull").

Today, an example of a real skull and crossbones may be seen in the 1732 Nuestra Señora del Pilar church overlooking the famous Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It contains several altars rescued from other early Spanish churches in South America. One of these has twenty rectangular window boxes arrayed behind and above the altar, five wide by four tall. The size of these glass window boxes is such that the femurs of the priests thus interred are a bit too long to lie flat and so must be leaned up in an "X" formation. The other bones fill in the spaces around the femurs with the skull sitting prominently on top of the bone pile centered above the "X".