emoji

noun

emo·​ji ē-ˈmō-jē 

plural emoji or emojis

: any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, email, and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc.

The function of emoji, as [emoji developer Shigetaka] Kurita describes it—adding subtle emotional emphasis to a sentence in text—isn't too different from that of emoticons, the frowny and smiley faces that people have been making out of punctuation since the mid-1990s.

—Britt Peterson

compare emoticon

Examples of emoji in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Shortly after, the beauty mogul posted the same photo to her own Instagram Stories with her son's name, a teddy bear and a blue heart emoji. —Ilana Kaplan, People.com, 21 Jan. 2025

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Ivanka Trump didn't comment on the decision to reference Sabrina, instead captioning photos of herself in the gown with black and white heart emoji. —Sam Reed, Glamour, 21 Jan. 2025

He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium. —Jay Peters, The Verge, 18 Jan. 2025

The social media post from the Sphere was accompanied by a side-eyes emoji. —Jessica Nicholson, Billboard, 15 Jan. 2025

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Japanese, literally, "pictograph," from e "picture, drawing" + moji "letter, character"

First Known Use

1997, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

emoji

noun

emo·​ji

ē-ˈmō-jē

plural emoji or emojis

: any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in electronic communication (as email) to express the feelings or attitude of the writer or to present information concisely or playfully