They are now considered to be a large part of popular culture in the West and around the world. Originating on Japanese mobile phones in 1997, emoji became increasingly popular worldwide in the 2010s after being added to several mobile operating systems.
The ISO 15924 script code for emoji is Zsye. Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e ( 絵, 'picture') + moji ( 文字, 'character') the resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental. They are much like emoticons, but emoji are pictures rather than typographic approximations the term 'emoji' in the strict sense refers to such pictures which can be represented as encoded characters, but it is sometimes applied to messaging stickers by extension. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation. You may need rendering support to display the Unicode emoticons or emojis in this article correctly.Īn emoji ( / ɪ ˈ m oʊ dʒ iː/ i- MOH-jee plural emoji or emojis ) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages.
