Face Screaming in Fear Emoji
Shock and horror, in the style of Munch's *The Scream*.
Try Face Screaming in Fear emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Face Screaming in Fear emoji mean?
Shock and horror, in the style of Munch's *The Scream*.
Dramatic shock, alarm or amazement. It is usually hyperbolic in casual chat and rarely means that the sender is in literal danger.
How to use 😱 naturally
Surprising news, dramatic reactions.
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, Face Screaming in Fear 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
A direct quotation of Munch's The Scream: hands to the cheeks, elongated face, wide oval mouth. One of very few emoji that reference a specific artwork.
- Today
How its use evolved
Surprising news, dramatic reactions.
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.
The exam is tomorrow, not Friday 😱
That plot twist came from nowhere 😱
Have you seen the hotel prices? 😱
When to use it
Using 😱 clearly
Surprising news, dramatic reactions. It lands as shock or scream 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 face screaming in fear emoji
What does 😱 mean in a text message?
Shock and horror, in the style of Munch's *The Scream*. Dramatic shock, alarm or amazement. It is usually hyperbolic in casual chat and rarely means that the sender is in literal danger.
Is 😱 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are shock, scream, scared, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 😱 look different on another device?
U+1F631 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 face screaming in fear 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 face screaming in fear 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.
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+1F631 | 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 | \1F631 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F631} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%98%B1 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F631
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion
- Also known as
- shockscreamscared
Put it in a message
When 😱 is the right choice
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