Understanding Emoji Meanings

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ☹️"― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

If you're Gen X or older, it's possible you don't understand the full scope of emoji meanings, let alone the point of all of them. After all, people have managed to express themselves with the written word for centuries, so why do we suddenly need all these tiny images to illustrate our messages?

On the other hand, the post-Millennial generations can effortlessly communicate with each other using nothing more than a string of emoji. To them, nothing screams "I'm a hopelessly out of touch Boomer!" quite as loud as an incorrectly used emoji. That's why they're such an integral part of social media management.

So how did we get here, why are they so popular, and most importantly, with so many options to choose from, how do you decipher emoji meanings?

Contents

Emoji History

Before computers had the graphical capabilities necessary to display emojis, people created emotional shorthand using plain old punctuation marks, like :-) or :-( and :-/ to name a few.

These "emoticons" were invented long before modern computers, when typesetters in the 1880s began using various punctuation marks to create simple representations of human faces smiling, frowning, or showing other emotions.

This image shows a selection of such proto-emojis from a German print publication in 1896:

There are earlier recorded instances of simple punctuation-based smileys like :) in literature dating as far back as the 17th century, but in most cases historians cannot agree whether these are deliberate or just errors.

The earliest modern example of emoticons being created by computer users were from the messaging systems used by the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982.

In 1990 Microsoft released its famous Wingdings font (still included with all Windows based PCs) which replaced alphanumeric characters with various graphical symbols, including smiling and frowning faces which could be considered early versions of emojis, even though they were never widely used.

Graphical emojis as we know them today really began to take off with the development of mobile phones. In 1997, Japanese company J-Phone introduced a set of 90 monochrome emojis, and as phones became more sophisticated with better graphical capabilities, emojis became more detailed and colorful.

By the time the first iPhone launched in 2007, western tech giants like Apple and Google were taking emojis seriously, looking at ways to standardize their implementation across different platforms.

The following year, Apple added emojis to iPhone OS 2.2, and since then they've become an integral part of our digital lives.

Why do People Use Emojis?

Conventional wisdom has it that emojis are used to add tone or emotion to a message, to avoid the sender's intent being misinterpreted due to lack of context. But people have been using words to express their ideas and feelings just fine for hundreds of years without the help of emojis, so why would they need them now?

Consider that emojis rose to popularity at about the same time as instant messaging apps, mobile phones, and short form social media like Twitter and Facebook. Suddenly people were communicating a lot more in short, rapid-fire written exchanges, whereas earlier forms such as email and blog posts afforded the writer much more space to make themselves understood.

Around the start of the millennium, an entire generation grew up chatting with their friends on MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger, before moving onto smartphones and social media within a decade. They pioneered a new way of communicating, characterized by high volumes of short text messages, exchanged at high speeds - there was no time for flowery prose or long winded clarifications.

Emojis offered a convenient way to quickly signify that your comment should be taken as a joke, or with irony, or that you're confused, upset, or shocked. They can also be used to "react" to a message or post, often a simple thumbs-up is used to signify agreement, or just to let the sender know you received their message even if you don't write a reply.

Tip: For a detailed breakdown of the most-used emojis of 2023, check out our blog!

Cultural Impact of Emojis

Emojis are now so ingrained into the public consciousness that we see them everywhere. They've gone from an almost underground phenomenon only understood by internet early-adopters, to a mainstream cultural trend.

Beyond their function as a ubiquitous communication tool, emojis have also been great for commerce. A quick search for the term "emoji" on Amazon reveals a seemingly endless selection of emoji branded toys, games (including Emoji Uno), clothing, and novelty items such as the poop-emoji cushion.

Emojis have even made their way into major Hollywood studio productions. In 2017, Sony Pictures released The Emoji Movie, with heavyweight names such as Patrick Stewart, Maya Rudolph, and Jennifer Coolidge voicing animated emoji characters. Critics almost universally panned the movie, but audiences rewarded it with $218 million in box office receipts.

Almost everybody who uses a smartphone and/or the internet knows about emojis, even if they might not fully understand all of the emoji meanings, and probably use them at least occasionally. It's fair to say that for better or worse, emojis have had a lasting impact on global culture.

Emoji Meanings for Marketing

You may be surprised to learn that emojis have been the subject of some serious academic research, particularly in relation to how they are used in marketing, such as this 2022 study into how they impact conversion on social media.

To save you a lot of reading through dense academic texts and marketing industry surveys, here's a quick summary of what many of the studies seem to say:

• Emojis can increase engagement, in the right context.
• Use them in fun, conversational copy, but not in a practical or informative context.
• Emojis used in the wrong context can damage credibility.
• They work better for younger audiences (duh).
• There are a lot of variables, more research is needed.
• You should do your own testing to figure out how emojis perform for you.

So, if you're a B2C brand, especially one with a customer base, it's almost certainly worth using emojis in things like social content and direct emails, but take a scientific approach to understand how best to deploy them. For example, try A/B testing email subject lines with and without emojis.

Proceed with caution - while clever use of emojis could add some extra sparkle to your content, you don't want to risk over-using them or, worse, using them in the wrong way and giving your customers a bad case of cringe.

Tip: To avoid a bad case of "millennial cringe", check out our blog covering the phenomenon and the specific emojis that are involved.

Emojis also serve another useful purpose in marketing - when we're analyzing social data, emojis are one of the signals we can use to understand sentiment at scale. While AI has gotten a lot better at inferring sentiment by parsing the meaning of text in recent years, emojis can provide us with additional clues about the author's intent, so tools like Meltwater Explore include emojis in their analysis, alongside AI.

Most Popular Emoji Meanings

There are thousands of emojis and it would be almost impossible to define the meaning of each one in this post, so to start with we'll take a look at the most popular emojis from 2023, based on our own analysis:

10 - Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes

A simple expression of happiness. Often used as a response when somebody says something nice about you, or just something that gives you the warm fuzzies.

9 ✨ - Sparkles

Originally used for positive emphasis in text, the sparkles emoji has more recently become associated with sarcasm and irony, so be careful how you use and interpret this emoji because there might be some subtext at play.

8 - Smiling Face with Hearts

No secret meanings here, the smiling face with hearts just expresses love and warmth.

7 - Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes

A more dramatic love emoji, for when you're absolutely obsessed with a person, or a thing.

6 - Folded Hands

People tend to use this emoji in a couple of different ways - to many westerners it looks like a prayer, and is used to show you are praying or simply hopeful that something will happen. In Asian countries, however, it's a gesture of respect which can be used as shorthand for please or thank you - and is often used by westerners in the same way.

5 - Fire

Used as shorthand for "hot" as in "attractive". Alternatively it can mean a person or organization is performing well, as in "You're on fire right now!" - and only sometimes, when something is literally on fire.

4 ❤️ - Red Heart

As simple as it gets, a red heart is used to show that you love a person or thing. Most often used to react to pictures of dogs, and specifically Golden Retrievers. Trust us on that, we have the data.

3 - Rolling on the Floor Laughing

Another one to approach with caution. Taken literally, it simply means that you found something very funny. But often this emoji is used ironically to signify that you are laughing at an opinion you disagree with - you will often find this emoji deployed vigorously in heated online debates.

2 - Loudly Crying Face

Superficially this face with tears streaming down can simply mean deep grief or sadness, but as with others listed here, it depends on context. People often use it to signify that they are feeling very emotional but in a positive way, like when somebody brings donuts into the office.

1 - Face with Tears of Joy

Similar to ROFL, but slightly less intense, for when you're highly amused by something but not to the point where you need to roll around on the floor.

Alternative Emoji Meanings

While the top ten emojis are highly overused, the discerning communicators amongst us will look further from the beaten path, seeking out less well known options to add some flavor to our posts. Here are a few emoji meanings that might not be as obvious as those we see every day:

- Skull

Much like the figure of the Grim Reaper in tarot cards, the skull doesn't always mean literal death, but can mean the author is deceased from laughing at something extraordinarily amusing, or that they are mortified by a disappointing or embarrassing experience.

- Inverted Smiling Face

Sometimes just a goofy alternative to the regular smiling face, but can also be used to show exasperation or resignation to a frustrating situation.

- Thumbs Up

"I acknowledge receipt of your message but will not elaborate further, perhaps because no response is required beyond simple confirmation, or more likely because I am bored and/or irritated by this discussion and wish to end it."

- Melting Face

Sometimes used to suggest that you are melting because of warm weather, but also to describe the feeling of wanting to melt away out of shame, embarrassment, or dismay at a difficult situation.

- Eggplant

Be careful with this emoji because it has a double meaning. Most people might think this is an eggplant, but in British English it's actually called an aubergine.

- Neutral Face

Could be literally interpreted as "I am neutral on this matter" but realistically, most people use it to mean "I'm thinking it, but I'm definitely not saying it, because of the consequences..."

- Grimace Face

Essentially a graphical representation of the emotion of "Yikes!"

- Eyes

"You had my curiosity, now you have my attention."

There are many, many more emojis, so it's always easy to find one (or a combination) that helps you to get your point across. But it's always important to remember that in the constantly evolving sphere of online culture, emojis can often take on meanings which might not be obvious at first glance, so make sure to do your research before using any that you're not familiar with.

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