Alien Emoji
A grey extraterrestrial face, used for strangeness, sci-fi and things beyond explanation.
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Meaning & usage
What does the Alien emoji mean?
A grey extraterrestrial face, used for strangeness, sci-fi and things beyond explanation.
Curious and jokey. It marks something as strange rather than genuinely otherworldly, and it is common in conspiracy humour that nobody means.
How to use 👽 naturally
Conspiracy jokes, science fiction and describing something as otherworldly.
Face emoji usually carry more tone than literal information. Read them alongside the words, the relationship between the people, and whether the conversation is playful, formal or tense.
From standard to slang
The history of 👽
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Alien was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. That label is retrospective: Unicode applied it later to the early mobile core it inherited from the Japanese carriers.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
The grey with the large head and black almond eyes, a specific 20th-century image rather than a general idea of a creature. It dates from Roswell-era popular culture.
- Today
How its use evolved
Conspiracy jokes, science fiction and describing something as otherworldly.
Dates follow Unicode’s official Emoji Versions chart. Versions before Emoji 1.0 are labelled retrospectively. See the history of emoji.
In conversation
Examples of 👽 in messages
These examples show the emoji in complete messages, where the words make its intended tone easier to read.
Nobody can explain how it works 👽
Lights over the field again 👽
That is not human behaviour 👽
When to use it
Using 👽 clearly
Conspiracy jokes, science fiction and describing something as otherworldly. It lands as alien emoji meaning or 👽 meaning when the rest of the message supports that reading, and it is the surrounding words that do the deciding — so in a sensitive, professional or cross-cultural conversation, say the thing outright as well.
Common questions
About the alien emoji
What does 👽 mean in a text message?
A grey extraterrestrial face, used for strangeness, sci-fi and things beyond explanation. Curious and jokey. It marks something as strange rather than genuinely otherworldly, and it is common in conspiracy humour that nobody means.
Is 👽 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are alien emoji meaning, 👽 meaning, extraterrestrial emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 👽 look different on another device?
U+1F47D identifies the emoji; the picture is a font, drawn separately by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Only the artwork changes, never the character.
How do I copy and paste the alien emoji?
Use the copy button at the top of this page. 👽 is a character, not an image, so it pastes into messages, captions and filenames as ordinary text.
When was the alien emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 👽 as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. Early emoji version numbers can be retrospective, so this date describes its place in the standardised emoji set rather than the first-ever appearance of the underlying symbol.
Easily confused
👽 compared with similar emoji
These sit close enough in meaning that people reach for the wrong one. Here is what actually separates them.
Alien or Alien Monster?
👽 is the classic grey face. 👾 is a pixelated arcade invader, so it carries a gaming reference the other does not.
For developers
👽 in code
Every value below is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the emoji directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+1F47D | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | 👽 | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | 👽 | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \1F47D | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F47D} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%91%BD | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F47D
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion
- Also known as
- alien emoji meaning👽 meaningextraterrestrial emoji
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