Certain tattoo symbols function as codes — legible within a specific group and opaque or misread outside it. Prison systems, gangs, and criminal organisations have developed tattoo vocabularies where placement, imagery, and even colour carry precise, sometimes enforceable meanings. But subcultures built around music, art, and identity have produced their own tattoo languages too — punk, hardcore, graffiti, skateboarding, rave culture — where the marks signal belonging, lineage, and shared values rather than rank or territory. What connects all of them is that the symbols mean something specific to insiders and something different — or nothing at all — to everyone else. The articles here cover tattoo symbolism rooted in subcultures of all kinds: what the marks mean to the people who use them, how those meanings developed, and what they carry when encountered outside their original context.
All | Animals | Botanicals | Maritime | Mythology & Fantasy | Sacred & Spiritual | Subculture | Objects | Patterns
Few tattoo symbols stir as much curiosity or misunderstanding as the teardrop tattoo. Small and placed under the eye, it’s more than just decoration — it often signals a deep personal history. While commonly associated with prison life and gang culture, its meaning isn’t fixed. For some, it represents loss or mourning; for others, acts of violence or survival.