Face with Symbols on Mouth Emoji
Grawlixes covering the mouth, standing in for swearing.
Try Face with Symbols on Mouth emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Face with Symbols on Mouth emoji mean?
Grawlixes covering the mouth, standing in for swearing.
Swearing without swearing. The symbols keep it usable in places actual profanity would not be, while leaving no doubt about the strength of feeling.
How to use 🤬 naturally
Strong frustration where the actual words would be inappropriate.
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 🤬
- 2017
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Face with Symbols on Mouth was first defined as emoji in Emoji 5.0, dated 2017. One of the steady annual widenings of the vocabulary.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
A red angry face with symbols covering the mouth, using the comic convention of substituting punctuation for swearing. Added in 2017.
- Today
How its use evolved
Strong frustration where the actual words would be inappropriate.
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.
Lost two hours of work 🤬
Fourth delay on this line 🤬
It deleted the whole folder 🤬
When to use it
Using 🤬 clearly
Strong frustration where the actual words would be inappropriate. It lands as face with symbols on mouth 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 face with symbols on mouth emoji
What does 🤬 mean in a text message?
Grawlixes covering the mouth, standing in for swearing. Swearing without swearing. The symbols keep it usable in places actual profanity would not be, while leaving no doubt about the strength of feeling.
Is 🤬 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are face with symbols on mouth, 🤬 meaning, swearing emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🤬 look different on another device?
U+1F92C 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 with symbols on mouth 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 with symbols on mouth emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🤬 as emoji in Emoji 5.0, dated 2017. 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.
Face with Symbols on Mouth or Enraged Face?
😡 shows the anger on the face; 🤬 puts it in the mouth as censored words, which reads as louder and more specific.
Face with Symbols on Mouth or Angry Face?
😠 is irritation. 🤬 is the point where you have stopped choosing your words.
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+1F92C | 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 | \1F92C | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F92C} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%A4%AC | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F92C
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion
- Also known as
- face with symbols on mouth🤬 meaningswearing emoji
Put it in a message
When 🤬 is the right choice
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