Search, browse, and discover the meaning of every emoji — with meanings, unicode, usage examples, and category filters.
There is a language spoken by billions of people every day, yet not a single word of it appears in any dictionary. It crosses every border, spans every generation, and works perfectly even when two people share no spoken tongue. This language is emoji — and like any language worth knowing, it has a history, a grammar, a soul.
This dictionary is not just a list of pictures and their names. It is a field guide to the symbols we use to laugh, to cry, to celebrate, to mourn, to signal understanding, to soften a difficult message, or to say "I am thinking of you" without typing a single letter. Every emoji in these pages carries a story — where it came from, what it was designed to mean, and how real people actually use it in the wild.
Over 870 emojis live here, searchable by name, by category, or by browsing through the visual shelves we have built. Click any emoji to see its full profile: its official Unicode name, its code point, a clear explanation of its meaning, and examples of how it appears in real conversations. You can also find it by typing a text emoticon — :) for the smiling face, <3 for the heart, :{'{'}( for sadness — because this dictionary knows that emoji did not invent emotion; they simply gave it a face.
In 1999, a young Japanese designer named Shigetaka Kurita sat at his desk at NTT DoCoMo, staring at a problem that seemed almost too small to matter: how do you express a feeling in 250 characters? The i-mode mobile platform was about to launch, and Kurita needed to give users a way to communicate emotions, weather conditions, and everyday concepts without eating up precious character space.
His answer was 176 tiny pictures, each just 12 by 12 pixels. He drew inspiration from manga comics, from the kanji characters he had grown up reading, from street signs and weather maps and the universal symbols of public restrooms. He called them "emoji" — combining the Japanese words for "picture" and "character." The first set included simple hearts, weather symbols, and facial expressions that could convey happiness, sadness, anger, and surprise in a single character.
What Kurita could not have known was that he had just planted the seed for the fastest-growing visual language in human history.
Today, over 3,600 emoji are recognized by the Unicode Standard, used by billions of people across every device, platform, and country. But the road from 176 pixelated icons to a global visual language was not a straight line. It involved competing Japanese carriers, a standardization battle, corporate rivalries, and ultimately, a quiet revolution in how human beings communicate at scale.
Each year, the Unicode Consortium — the gatekeepers of written text in the digital age — reviews hundreds of proposals for new emoji. Anyone can submit one. They arrive from companies like Apple and Google, but also from individuals, from cultural organizations, from children who wrote letters asking for a dumpling emoji or a hockey stick. Each proposal must demonstrate frequency of use, visual distinctiveness, and genuine communicative need. The process takes about 18 months. And every year, new emoji are born — not because a corporation decided we needed them, but because human expression demanded it.
There is a strange truth about emoji that most people do not realize: the same emoji can look completely different depending on who sent it. Apple's emoji are detailed, rounded, almost sculptural. Google's are flatter, brighter, more cartoon-like. Microsoft's have a distinct corporate polish. Samsung's lean toward bold colors and simpler shapes. WhatsApp's are their own world entirely.
This means that when you send a grin, you cannot be certain what the person on the other end actually sees. Over the years, this has led to genuine misunderstandings. The grinning face has a subtly different expression on every platform — warm on some, manic on others. The folded hands emoji is prayer on one device and a high-five on another. The peach sits innocently in the Unicode standard as a piece of fruit, but its design — plump, cleft, perfectly curved — has made it one of the most creatively repurposed symbols in the entire set.
This dictionary displays emoji using whatever system your device provides. The words beneath them — the names, the meanings, the usage examples — do not change. Because while the art may differ from screen to screen, the language remains the same.
Every year, the Unicode Consortium releases data on which emoji are used most frequently across messaging platforms, social media, and the open web. While the rankings shift slightly from year to year, a few emoji have held the top positions consistently. The face with tears of joy — officially named "Face with Tears of Joy" and encoded as U+1F602 — has been the most used emoji globally every year since 2015, when Oxford Dictionaries named it the Word of the Year. It is estimated to have been used over two billion times across Twitter and Facebook alone.
Following closely behind are the red heart, the smiling face with heart-eyes, the crying face, the rolling on the floor laughing face, and the thumbs up. These emoji dominate because they express the most common emotional states people want to communicate in digital messages: love, laughter, sadness, approval, and affection. The data reveals something important about human nature — we use emoji primarily to connect emotionally, not to convey information.
Platform-specific data shows interesting variations. On Instagram, the most used emoji tend to be related to lifestyle and visual aesthetics — the red heart, the fire emoji, the camera flash, and various nature symbols. On Twitter, reaction emoji like laughter, crying, and anger are more common. On TikTok, the skull emoji (meaning "I'm dead from laughter") has surged in popularity among younger users. These platform differences show that emoji usage is not just cultural but contextual — the same person uses different emoji on different platforms depending on the social norms of each space.
Seasonal trends also shape emoji usage. The pumpkin and ghost emoji spike in October around Halloween. The Christmas tree and Santa Claus surge in December. The party popper and fireworks cluster around New Year's Eve. The heart emoji usage increases by over 30 percent on Valentine's Day. These patterns show that emoji have become deeply embedded in how we mark time, celebrate holidays, and participate in shared cultural moments.
While emoji are often described as a universal language, the way they are used varies significantly across cultures and regions. A gesture that is friendly in one country can be offensive in another, and emoji are no exception. The thumbs up emoji, which in Western cultures signals approval or agreement, is considered a rude gesture in parts of the Middle East, West Africa, and South America. The folded hands emoji is understood as prayer or gratitude in most of the world, but in some contexts it is interpreted as a high-five or a gesture of pleading.
In Japan, where emoji originated, the culture of emoji usage differs noticeably from Western usage. Japanese users tend to prefer cute, kawaii-style emoji and use them more sparingly and deliberately. The heart emoji (kokoro) carries deeper emotional weight and is not used as casually as in Western messaging. Japanese emoji culture also places more emphasis on seasonal and nature-related emoji, reflecting the traditional cultural practice of marking seasonal changes through language and art.
In China, emoji usage has evolved differently due to the dominance of platforms like WeChat and Weibo. Chinese users have developed their own emoji vocabulary, including the use of certain emoji as inside jokes or coded references that would not be understood outside the Chinese internet. For example, the smiley face emoji in Chinese messaging often carries a sarcastic or passive-aggressive tone, unlike its friendly meaning in Western contexts.
In the Middle East, certain hand gestures that are positive in Western cultures have negative connotations. The "OK" hand sign emoji, while generally neutral or positive in the West, is associated with offensive meanings in some Middle Eastern and South American countries. Understanding these cultural nuances is essential for anyone communicating across borders, and this dictionary provides the context you need to avoid misunderstandings.
Each year, the Unicode Consortium releases a new set of emoji as part of its annual Unicode standard update. The process for adding a new emoji is surprisingly rigorous and surprisingly democratic. Anyone can submit a proposal for a new emoji, but the proposal must clear a series of hurdles before it reaches the final approval stage. The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee evaluates each proposal on five criteria: expected frequency of use, multiple usage scenarios, visual distinctiveness at small sizes, whether it fills a gap in the existing set, and compatibility with platforms that already support similar symbols.
The proposal process takes approximately 18 months from initial submission to final release. Proposals must include evidence of demand, such as search frequency data, petition signatures, or demonstrated usage in existing communication. The committee receives hundreds of proposals each year, and typically approves between 30 and 50 new emoji annually. Recent years have seen a push toward greater diversity and representation, including emoji for disabilities, culturally specific symbols, and gender-neutral options.
Some of the most notable new emoji in recent years include the guide dog, the wheelchair, the prosthetic limb, the sign language interpreter, the transgender flag, the heart on fire, the coral reef, the goose, the donkey, the black bird, the maracas, the flute, and the khanda symbol. Each of these emoji was proposed by someone who identified a gap in the existing visual vocabulary and made a case for why it needed to be filled. The result is a living, growing visual language that continues to evolve alongside the culture it serves.
Perhaps the most famous emoji proposal success story is the dumpling emoji. It was proposed by a Google employee named Yiying Lu, who noticed that while many international foods were represented in the emoji set, the humble dumpling — a staple food across multiple Asian cuisines — was nowhere to be found. Her proposal passed through the rigorous approval process, and the dumpling emoji was released in 2020. It has since become one of the most used food emoji on the planet, proving that a single person with a good idea can change how billions of people communicate.
As digital communication continues to evolve, so too will emoji. Several trends are shaping the future of this visual language. The first is personalization. Just as we now have custom stickers and GIFs, the next frontier for emoji is likely to be personalized emoji that reflect the user's appearance, style, and identity. Several platforms have already experimented with customizable emoji features, and the trend toward greater personalization is expected to accelerate.
The second trend is animation. While most emoji are static images, there is growing interest in animated emoji that can express more nuanced emotions and actions. Animated memoji on Apple devices and animated stickers on platforms like Telegram represent early versions of this trend. The Unicode Consortium has not yet standardized animated emoji, but industry observers expect movement in this direction within the next few years.
The third trend is integration with augmented reality and virtual reality. As AR and VR technologies become more mainstream, the way we express emotion in digital spaces will need to evolve. Three-dimensional emoji, spatial emoji that float in a room, and emoji that respond to facial expressions are all areas of active development. The boundary between emoji and avatars is beginning to blur, and the next decade may see the emergence of a fully three-dimensional emoji vocabulary.
Finally, emoji will continue to become more inclusive and representative. The Unicode Consortium has made diversity a priority in recent years, and this trend is expected to continue. More skin tone options, more family configurations, more culturally specific symbols, and more emoji representing disabilities and medical conditions are all on the horizon. The goal is a visual language that truly represents the full range of human experience — and this dictionary will continue to document every step of that evolution.