About Emojimeanings.net
About Emojimeanings.net
Explaining smileys and emojis since 2013
Who's behind this site
How it all started
It all started with a chat between one of us and their girlfriend. A 🤔 was meant to say: let me think about your idea. What came across was: I don't like your idea. Luckily, that got cleared up. But since then, we know how differently an emoji can land from what you meant.
In 2013, we started a small German website about text smileys like :-) and ;-). Back then, emojis weren't in every chat yet.
By 2015 they were everywhere, and so were the misunderstandings. So we started collecting emoji meanings and writing them down.
Even at university
We stuck with the topic during our computer science studies, too. The bachelor's thesis was about emojis, and so was the master's thesis. It looked at emojis in online shopping and how they influence buying decisions. And yes: with the right emojis, customers are more likely to buy. 😮
From one language to 17
Over time, people from other countries joined in and brought the meanings into their own languages. Besides the original German site, that includes Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian. Today you can find us in 17 languages. 🌍
And really, all we want is still the same: a 🤔 should come across as thinking, not as a no.
How we write our texts
We take emoji names, Unicode versions and code points from the official Unicode Standard. The meanings are written the way people actually use emojis. What an emoji shows is one thing. What someone means by it is often something else entirely.
Since an emoji looks different on an iPhone than on Android and can be read differently depending on the situation, we also note what it often gets confused with. We revise our texts regularly, and the date of the last update is always at the top of the page.
Contact
Emojimeanings.net is run by Smile MB Strategies LLC. You'll find all the details in our legal disclosure.
Spotted a mistake, have a question or an idea? Just email us at info@emojimeanings.net.
Comments and questions
Under many emojis, you can share what an emoji means to you. We read every comment before it goes live and answer questions right below it. If a comment shows us that a meaning is missing or wrong, we fix the text.