The following emoji categories are sorted by group. You'll find all current WhatsApp and Facebook smileys as well as a description of their meaning. You can use the various emojis on any Apple, Android, and Windows device. Have fun with diving into the colorful world of emojis!
📕 Select Emoji Category:
What is the difference between emojis, emoticons and smileys?
We all know the funny yellow faces and use them almost every day. They make communication easier for us, replace entire words and make our chats or emails more colorful. But what is their correct name? Mostly, the terms emoji and emoticon are used interchangeably. However, there are differences between these terms.
What is an emoticon? :-D
The English words “emotion” and “icon” form the term emoticon.
Short strings of symbols, letters or numbers are intended to represent facial expressions and postures.
Emoticons can liven up the text and convey moods or emotional states.
:-D means laughing or a big grin. If surprised, we use :-O and <3 stands for the heart and feelings.
The archetype of the emoticon is the stick man face.
In 1982, a misunderstood joke among physicists led to the question of how irony might be characterized in written communication.
Scott Fohlman then suggested the combination :-) with an instruction to tilt one’s head to read it.
What is a smiley? :-D
The term of course comes from the English verb "to smile".
The smiley is the graphic representation of a facial expression.
In written communication, the person writing expresses that he or she is delighted or joking.
In the 1960s, commercial artist Harvey Ball drew a smiling face with a circle, two dots and a curved line.
This is how the symbol of high spirits came about.
However, he forgot to legally safeguard the sign and it quickly gained popularity.
The originally yellow, smiling face became an expression of rave culture.
There are now a multitude of additions and variations to express different feelings.
What is an emoji? 😊
The step from the stick man face to the image took place in Japan.
The term is composed of an "e" for image and "moji" for character.
Inspired by the manga world, software engineer Shigetaka Kurita developed 176 emojis in the 1990s.
He was working on a pager service for a Japanese mobile provider and thereby wanted to boost its marketing among young people.
Emojis are images or pictographs.
Facial expressions and gestures are shown in the form of faces and people.
Objects, food, activities, animals, plants, places and other associations can also be displayed.
This allows for more expressive communication.
Emoticons are now automatically converted into emojis in word processing programs or online services.
To display emojis, the Unicode is converted into a graphic. Emojis have been available on our mobile phones since 2010.
In contrast to emoticons, emojis offer a larger variety of facial expressions. They also offer options for adaptation, such as hair color.
The graphic no longer needs to be rotated by 90°. Emojis are very popular and are regularly used by 92% of Internet users.
In 2015, the great popularity of emojis led to the Oxford Dictionary choosing an emoji as the Word of the Year.
Due to its overcoming of language barriers, the face with tears of joy 😂 chosen as the most used emoji.
On July 17, people celebrate the unofficial World Emoji Day.
Possible misunderstandings in the use of emojis, emoticons and smileys
We usually keep it short in real-time communication. In written texts, misunderstandings happen more easily because of the lack of nonverbal communication. What was meant ironically might be taken seriously. A joke or a wordplay is not taken in or is misunderstood. You get your wires crossed. But the pitfalls are not only in communication.
