Emoji & Unicode Glossary

Emoji

A Japanese word (絵文字) meaning 'picture character' — small graphical symbols used in digital communication to express ideas, emotions, and …

Emoji Frequency

How often specific emojis are used in digital communication, tracked through usage data from platforms and research studies.

Emoji Sentiment

The emotional tone or meaning associated with emoji usage, studied through sentiment analysis of how people use emoji in communication.

Emoticon

A text-based representation of a facial expression using standard keyboard characters, such as :-) or :D, predating graphical emoji.

Flat Design Emoji

Simplified, two-dimensional emoji designs without realistic textures or shadows, reflecting modern flat design principles.

Kaomoji

Japanese-style text emoticons using Unicode characters that are read face-on rather than sideways, such as (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻.

Shigetaka Kurita

Japanese artist who created the first emoji set — 176 12x12 pixel designs for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet service …

Skeuomorphic Emoji

Emoji designed to look like realistic, three-dimensional objects with shadows, gradients, and texture — common in early emoji designs.

Smiley

The original yellow circular face icon created by Harvey Ball in 1963, which inspired the design of modern face emoji.

Sticker

Larger, more detailed digital images used in messaging apps, often animated, that complement but are separate from standard emoji.

World Emoji Day

Annual celebration on July 17, created by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge in 2014 to promote and celebrate emoji culture.

i-mode

NTT DoCoMo's mobile internet platform launched in 1999, where the first emoji were created to enhance text communication.

Bitmap Emoji

Emoji rendered as pixel-based images at fixed resolutions, stored as PNG or similar raster formats within font files.

CBDT/CBLC (CBDT)

Color Bitmap Data Table and Color Bitmap Location Table — OpenType tables for embedding bitmap color emoji in fonts.

COLR/CPAL (COLR)

OpenType color font tables that define emoji as layered vector shapes with a color palette, used by Windows and Chrome.

Color Emoji

Full-color emoji rendered using bitmap images or color vector graphics, as opposed to monochrome text-style rendering.

Emoji Accessibility

Making emoji usable for people with disabilities, including screen reader descriptions, accessible designs, and representation emoji.

Emoji Annotation

Short keywords and descriptions associated with each emoji for search, text-to-speech, and accessibility purposes.

Emoji Size

The display dimensions of emoji in different contexts, which vary by platform, application, and rendering context.

Monochrome Emoji

Single-color, outline-style emoji rendering that displays emoji as simple text symbols without color.

SVG in OpenType (SVGinOT)

A method of embedding SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) documents directly in OpenType font files for scalable color emoji.

Vector Emoji

Emoji rendered using scalable vector graphics (SVG or COLR) that remain crisp at any display size.

CLDR (CLDR)

The Common Locale Data Repository, a Unicode project providing locale-specific data including emoji names and search keywords in 100+ languages.

Emoji Kitchen

A Google feature that lets users combine two emoji into creative mashup stickers, available in Gboard and Google Search.

Emoji Proposal

A formal submission to the Unicode Consortium requesting the addition of a new emoji, evaluated on criteria like expected usage …

Emoji Subcommittee (ESC)

The Unicode working group responsible for reviewing emoji proposals, setting encoding guidelines, and recommending new emoji for approval.

Emoji Version

The release version in which an emoji was first introduced, following an annual release cadence since Emoji 4.0 (2016).

Emojipedia

The leading reference website for emoji meanings, designs, and platform comparisons, founded by Jeremy Burge in 2013.

ICU (ICU)

International Components for Unicode — a widely-used open-source library providing Unicode and internationalization support, including emoji processing.

OpenType

A font format developed by Microsoft and Adobe that supports color emoji rendering through multiple color table technologies.

Unicode Consortium

The non-profit organization that develops and maintains the Unicode Standard, including the process for adding new emoji.

Unicode Standard

The complete character encoding system maintained by the Unicode Consortium, defining characters, properties, algorithms, and encoding forms.

Unicode Technical Standard #51 (UTS#51)

The Unicode specification that defines how emoji work — including emoji properties, sequences, presentation, and ordering.

emoji-test.txt

The official Unicode file listing all emoji sequences with their qualification status, code points, and CLDR short names.

BOM (BOM)

The Byte Order Mark (U+FEFF) placed at the start of a text file to indicate byte order (endianness) in UTF-16/UTF-32 …

Code Unit

The minimum bit combination used for encoding a character: 8-bit for UTF-8, 16-bit for UTF-16, and 32-bit for UTF-32.

Plane

A group of 65,536 consecutive Unicode code points. Plane 0 is the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP); most emoji live in …

Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP)

Unicode Plane 1 (U+10000 to U+1FFFF), where the majority of emoji code points are allocated.

Surrogate Pair

Two UTF-16 code units (a high surrogate U+D800-U+DBFF followed by a low surrogate U+DC00-U+DFFF) that together represent a character above …

UTF-16

A variable-width Unicode encoding that uses 2 or 4 bytes per character, used internally by JavaScript, Java, and Windows.

UTF-32

A fixed-width Unicode encoding that uses exactly 4 bytes per character, providing direct code point mapping at the cost of …

UTF-8

A variable-width Unicode encoding that uses 1 to 4 bytes per character, dominant on the web (used by 98%+ of …

Apple Emoji

Apple's proprietary emoji designs used across iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, known for their detailed, skeuomorphic style.

Emoji Font

A digital font file containing color emoji glyph designs, using technologies like COLR, CBDT, SVG, or sbix for rendering.

Google Noto Emoji

Google's open-source emoji font family used on Android, Chrome, and available for anyone to use in their projects.

JoyPixels

A cross-platform emoji set formerly known as EmojiOne, available under a freemium license for personal and commercial use.

Microsoft Fluent Emoji

Microsoft's 3D-style emoji designs introduced with Windows 11, featuring animated versions and released as open source.

OpenMoji

An open-source emoji library designed by students at HfG Schwabisch Gmund, providing consistent, minimalist emoji for everyone.

Platform Rendering

How different platforms (Apple, Google, Samsung, etc.) display the same Unicode emoji with their own unique visual designs.

Samsung Emoji

Samsung's custom emoji designs shipped with Samsung Galaxy devices, historically known for dramatically different interpretations.

Twemoji

An open-source emoji set originally created by Twitter, providing SVG and PNG emoji assets that can be used in any …

WhatsApp Emoji

WhatsApp's custom emoji set used within the messaging app, maintaining a consistent look across all devices.

Code Point

A unique numerical value assigned to each character in the Unicode standard, written in the format U+XXXX (e.g., U+1F600 for …

Emoji Presentation

The default rendering of a character as a colorful emoji glyph, either inherently or when triggered by Variation Selector-16.

Emoji Sequence

An ordered set of one or more Unicode code points that together represent a single emoji character.

Fully Qualified (FQE)

An emoji sequence that includes all required variation selectors and presents consistently across all platforms.

Grapheme Cluster

A user-perceived character that may be composed of multiple Unicode code points displayed as a single visual unit.

Keycap Sequence

An emoji sequence formed by a digit or symbol, followed by VS-16 (U+FE0F) and the combining enclosing keycap character (U+20E3).

Minimally Qualified

An emoji sequence missing optional variation selectors but still containing enough information to render as an emoji on most platforms.

Regional Indicator (RI)

Paired Unicode letters (U+1F1E6 to U+1F1FF) that form country flag emoji when combined according to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes.

Skin Tone Modifier

Five Unicode modifier characters based on the Fitzpatrick scale that change the skin color of human emoji (U+1F3FB to U+1F3FF).

Tag Sequence

Emoji flag sequences using special tag characters (U+E0020 to U+E007E) to represent subdivision flags like England, Scotland, and Wales.

Text Presentation

The rendering of a character as a monochrome text symbol, either by default or when Variation Selector-15 is applied.

Unicode

Universal character encoding standard that assigns a unique number to every character across all writing systems and symbol sets, including …

Unqualified

An emoji sequence missing required variation selectors, which may not render as an emoji on all platforms.

Variation Selector (VS)

Unicode characters (VS-15 U+FE0E and VS-16 U+FE0F) that modify whether a character renders in text (monochrome) or emoji (colorful) presentation.

Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ)

An invisible Unicode character (U+200D) used to join multiple emoji into a single composite emoji, such as combining people and …