Try Broom emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Broom emoji mean?
A besom broom, for cleaning, Halloween and sweeping things aside.
Domestic or witchy depending on the month. October changes how it is read entirely.
How to use 🧹 naturally
Tidying posts, October decoration and jokes about clearing out.
Object emoji usually point to an activity or topic rather than an emotion. They work well as labels in lists, captions and announcements, where the image makes the subject easy to scan.
From standard to slang
The history of 🧹
- 2018
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Broom was first defined as emoji in Emoji 11.0, dated 2018. The first release under the current annual numbering.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
Added in 2018 as a traditional besom with a bound bristle head. The old-fashioned shape was chosen so it could serve both cleaning and Halloween.
- Today
How its use evolved
Tidying posts, October decoration and jokes about clearing out.
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.
Whole flat, top to bottom 🧹
Costume is basically this and a hat 🧹
Swept that thought straight out 🧹
When to use it
Using 🧹 clearly
Tidying posts, October decoration and jokes about clearing out. It lands as broom emoji 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 broom emoji
What does 🧹 mean in a text message?
A besom broom, for cleaning, Halloween and sweeping things aside. Domestic or witchy depending on the month. October changes how it is read entirely.
Is 🧹 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are broom emoji, 🧹 meaning, cleaning emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🧹 look different on another device?
U+1F9F9 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 broom 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 broom emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🧹 as emoji in Emoji 11.0, dated 2018. 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.
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+1F9F9 | 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 | \1F9F9 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F9F9} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%A7%B9 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F9F9
- Category
- Objects & Tech
- Also known as
- broom emoji🧹 meaningcleaning emoji
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