Hourglass Meaning: Time, Death and Life — and as a Tattoo

The hourglass is one of the plainest symbols there is: two glass bulbs, a narrow neck, and sand falling from one to the other. It measures a fixed amount of time, and you can watch that time run out. That is why, for seven hundred years, it has stood for something bigger than the hour.

A short history of the hourglass

Sandglasses appear in Europe in the 14th century. One of the earliest pictures of one is in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco Allegory of Good Government, painted in Siena in 1338. They were cheap, reliable and unaffected by the motion of a ship, so sailors used them for centuries to time the watches and, with a knotted log line, to measure a ship's speed. Churches used them to time sermons. Mechanical clocks and then watches gradually replaced them, but the symbol stayed.

The hourglass as a symbol of death

Because the sand always runs out, the hourglass became one of the central images of memento mori — "remember that you will die".

• Father Time and the Grim Reaper are both shown carrying one, often alongside a scythe.
• In Dutch vanitas paintings of the 17th century, an hourglass sits beside a skull, a guttering candle and wilting flowers: everything passes. See vanitas paintings.
• On old gravestones, a winged hourglass means tempus fugit, "time flies". An hourglass lying on its side can mean that time has stopped for the person buried there.
• Some pirate flags showed an hourglass to tell a crew their time to surrender was running out — see pirate flag meanings.

Hourglass meaning in life

The same object carries a more hopeful reading.

• Patience. Sand cannot be hurried. The hourglass is a reminder that some things take the time they take.
• Balance. The two bulbs are equal, and the sand moves between them — past and future, with the present at the narrow neck.
• Renewal. Unlike a clock, an hourglass can be turned over. When the sand runs out, you can begin again.

Hourglass meaning, spiritual

Many people read the hourglass as a call to live deliberately: if time is limited, spend it on what matters. The Stoics never saw one, but the idea is theirs — Seneca's letters return again and again to the shortness of life and the waste of time. Read more in the meaning of memento mori.

Hourglass tattoo meaning

An hourglass tattoo usually means one of these:

• Mortality — life is short, live it fully.
• Remembrance — often with a date, a name or sand half-run, for someone lost.
• Patience or recovery — time heals, or time served.
• Balance — especially paired with opposites, such as a skull and a rose, or sun and moon.

Wings, a skull or roses push the meaning towards memento mori; flowers or a sunrise towards renewal.

The hourglass emoji and other meanings

On many messaging apps, an hourglass shows that something is about to expire — on Snapchat, for instance, it warns that a streak is about to end. An hourglass figure describes a body with a narrow waist. And the black widow spider is known for the red hourglass marked on its abdomen.

An hourglass to carry

A memento mori coin puts the symbol in your pocket. Our antique silver coin shows an hourglass between roses and skulls on one face and the reaper reaching out of a clock on the other — a small, heavy reminder to turn over before a big decision. For something that measures time as well as symbolising it, see how to wind a pocket watch.