Hole Emoji
A dark opening in the ground, used literally and for the wish to disappear into one.
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Meaning & usage
What does the Hole emoji mean?
A dark opening in the ground, used literally and for the wish to disappear into one.
Bleak in a self-deprecating way. Used literally it is rare; almost every appearance is someone saying they would like to climb into one, which makes it a marker of embarrassment.
How to use 🕳️ naturally
Embarrassment, gaps in a plan and jokes about wanting to vanish.
Reaction symbols work like visual emphasis: they reinforce a word, rate an idea or replace a short response. Repetition normally increases intensity, but it can also make a message feel more performative.
From standard to slang
The history of 🕳️
- 2014
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Hole was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.7, dated 2014. Another retrospective label, covering characters recognised as emoji in 2014.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
A dark opening in a flat surface. Encoded in 2014 as a plain object, and used almost entirely for the wish to climb into one.
- Today
How its use evolved
Embarrassment, gaps in a plan and jokes about wanting to vanish.
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.
Said good morning to someone I have worked with for a year and used the wrong name 🕳️
Waved at a stranger who was waving at the person behind me 🕳️
Replied all. To four hundred people 🕳️
When to use it
Using 🕳️ clearly
Embarrassment, gaps in a plan and jokes about wanting to vanish. It lands as hole 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 hole emoji
What does 🕳️ mean in a text message?
A dark opening in the ground, used literally and for the wish to disappear into one. Bleak in a self-deprecating way. Used literally it is rare; almost every appearance is someone saying they would like to climb into one, which makes it a marker of embarrassment.
Is 🕳️ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are hole emoji, 🕳️ meaning, black hole emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🕳️ look different on another device?
U+1F573 U+FE0F 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 hole 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 hole emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🕳️ as emoji in Emoji 0.7, dated 2014. 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.
Hole or Flushed Face?
😳 shows the embarrassment on a face. 🕳️ skips to the consequence — wanting to disappear — which is the more theatrical of the two.
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+1F573 U+FE0F | 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 | \1F573 \FE0F | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F573}\u{FE0F} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%95%B3%EF%B8%8F | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F573 U+FE0F
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- hole emoji🕳️ meaningblack hole emoji
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