Emojiology: 😏 Smirking Face (2024)

One of the great virtues of emojis are their ability to mark tone where plain text cannot. A simple ❤️ Red Heart can add affection to a text message. A string of 😂 😂 😂 Face With Tears of Joy can show we find something funny in a social media post. Yet in the small space of an emoji, it’s not always so easy to encapsulate the full complexity of our emotions. Consider 😏.

On the Apple keyboard, 😏 shares its raised brows and comma-shaped side-eyes with 😒 Unamused Face, but boasts a half-smile co*cked up to the left instead. 😏 is definitely amused in some way, but how, exactly? It’s time again for some emojiology.

Above: On Apple's keyboard, the Smirking Face emoji (left) and the Unamused Face emoji (center) share the same eyes but very different smiles. The Smirking Face emoji also has a cat smiley variant (right), Cat Face With Wry Smile.

As its official name reveals, 😏 Smirking Face represents the facial expression of a smirk. It’s used to communicate a range of feelings, including smugness, self-confidence, self-indulgence, mischief, cheeky humor, and general satisfaction. 😏 Smirking Face especially implies, however, flirtation and sexual innuendo.

#IGotDetentionFor correcting the English teacher's grammar😏
— Triňity° (@ii4trinity) March 7, 2018

😏 Smirking Face popularly debuted in 2010 with its approval under Unicode 6.0. Apple did include the emoji, though, in its initial implementation of emoji support as part of iPhone OS 2.2 in 2008, though on a limited basis in Japan.

Above: How the Smirking Face emoji displays across platforms. Note that only Mozilla's smiley looks straight ahead.

Wedged between 🙄 Face With Rolling Eyes and 😣 Persevering Face, 😏 Smirking Face bears some notable similarities—and contrasts—on different keyboards.

Across the major platforms, the character sports a knowing smile upturned to the face’s left, though its length and sharpness widely vary. The smiles on Google and Microsoft’s 😏 Smirking Face, for instance, have softer curves, portraying a shyer, kinder-seeming smiley. LG and Facebook leave out eyebrows, while Mozilla alone depicts eyes looking straight ahead; the rest of the smileys squint impishly to their left.

😏 Smirking Face christened Twitter in May 2011, and skyrocketed on social media later that summer with Apple’s release of OS X Lion, which supported emoji for its desktop computers.

In 2015, Snapchat thrust 😏 Smirking Face into further prominence when it launched Friend Emojis, a feature designed to help users manage their contacts on the messaging app by using emoji to symbolize friendship statuses. Among them was the 😏 Smirking Face, which means: “You are one of their best friends…but they are not a best friend of yours. You don’t send them many snaps, but they send you a lot.” With its 😏 Smirking Face, Snapchat implies the messaging imbalance is a dirty little secret the favored friend can take some pleasure in.

Some Snapchatters greeted the change with a 😏 Smirking Face:

The new snapchat update gives me another reason to love this emoji 😏
— C a i t l i n ॐ (@Caitlin0Sanders) April 6, 2015

Others gave it the ole 😒 Unamused Face:

I feel rly uncomfortable with the new snapchat update there is a "😏" emoji next to a conversation with my mum wtf ????
— emily (@emilypugh_) April 6, 2015

Snapchat may have made @emilypugh_ feel “uncomfortable” because of 😏 Smirking Face's increasing use to signal flirtation or punctuate suggestive remarks in internet dating culture in the late 2010s.