Try to keep going though. Close. Play. Search. Pause. Stop. Fast forward. I'm guessing you can name a few more, and you might get a group of people to agree about 15 are super obvious and generally accepted. It's a tiny number.
We are literally living in the era of emoji and there is one for every single one up there. Teens can have all conversations without using words.
It happens because the more we use symbols, the more we attach and spread meaning.
Send "lesser than three" to someone 30 years ago, you'll get a blank reaction.
Send "<3" today, and it's a different game.
As someone who uses emojis to a degree that is embarrasing, I agree tgat often are amazing to convey things tgat words have harder time, but I still have to accept that there is ambiguity in their meanings, yes, a bunch of conventions have rooted enough that most people would undertand the same, but get out of those or simply present them in a different environment and things change. Labels are way less ambiguous.
Instead, I find myself trying to puzzle out what the hell some cryptic pictogram means, very frustrating. I also have really come to despise this trend of not visually signifying that an icon is a pressable button.
On modern Android menus are (more) often I under a button with 3 dots.
Occasionally horizontal, usually vertical.
Fun fact, the original icon for this was more like:
/-----\
| --- |
| --- |
Similarly in some DOS TUIs: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/23921
I definitely agree. I just think that it's just been so common in GUIs for long enough to be one of the few that's probably safe to just assume will be understood. Sort of like the two vertical bars for 'pause' on a media player.