Slightly Smiling Face Emoji
A small closed-mouth smile that reads as polite on the surface and, very often, as something drier underneath.
Try Slightly Smiling Face emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Slightly Smiling Face emoji mean?
A small closed-mouth smile that reads as polite on the surface and, very often, as something drier underneath.
Deceptively loaded. Older users often mean it as a plain, friendly smile, while younger ones read the same face as strained politeness or quiet rage, so it is one of the most reliably misread emoji in cross-generational chat.
How to use 🙂 naturally
Neutral acknowledgements, and passive-aggressive replies where the smile is doing the complaining.
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 🙂
- 2015
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Slightly Smiling Face was first defined as emoji in Emoji 1.0, dated 2015. The first release where Unicode versioned the emoji set as a standard in its own right.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
The smallest possible smile with wide open eyes. Its flatness is why it has become the standard carrier of passive aggression online.
- Today
How its use evolved
Neutral acknowledgements, and passive-aggressive replies where the smile is doing the complaining.
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.
Sure, I'll redo the whole deck 🙂
Thanks for letting me know 🙂
It's fine. Everything is fine 🙂
When to use it
Using 🙂 clearly
Neutral acknowledgements, and passive-aggressive replies where the smile is doing the complaining. It lands as slightly smiling face or passive aggressive smile 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 slightly smiling face emoji
What does 🙂 mean in a text message?
A small closed-mouth smile that reads as polite on the surface and, very often, as something drier underneath. Deceptively loaded. Older users often mean it as a plain, friendly smile, while younger ones read the same face as strained politeness or quiet rage, so it is one of the most reliably misread emoji in cross-generational chat.
Is 🙂 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are slightly smiling face, passive aggressive smile, polite smile emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🙂 look different on another device?
U+1F642 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 slightly smiling face 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 slightly smiling face emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🙂 as emoji in Emoji 1.0, dated 2015. 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.
Slightly Smiling Face or Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes?
😊 reads as genuinely warm because the eyes are smiling too. 🙂 uses only the mouth, which is exactly why it can read as strained.
Slightly Smiling Face or Grinning Face?
😀 is openly cheerful with no subtext available. 🙂 is the one people read as passive-aggressive.
Slightly Smiling Face or Upside-Down Face?
🙃 admits the cheerfulness is a front. 🙂 leaves it ambiguous, which is what makes it sharper.
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+1F642 | 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 | \1F642 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F642} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%99%82 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F642
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion
- Also known as
- slightly smiling facepassive aggressive smilepolite smile emoji
Put it in a message
When 🙂 is the right choice
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