Saluting face 🫡

How to read it

🫡 is U+1FAE1 SALUTING FACE, approved in Unicode 14.0 in 2021, and on iPhones since iOS 15.4 in March 2022. Dictionary.com’s 2023 entry says it is sometimes used straightforwardly for a military salute, and more generally to show respect and obedience, or sarcastically. Emojipedia calls it a sign of respect and an emoji version of the text emoticon o7, where the o is a head and the 7 a raised arm, still popular in gaming communities and on Twitch. Unicode’s English keywords for it are respect, salute, sir, ma’am, yes, OK, troops and good luck. The designs differ in the face: Emojipedia notes that some vendors draw it neutral and others smiling, and that Apple’s and Huawei’s show only half a face, probably so the hand stands out at small sizes.

Also searched as: 🫡, o7, salute emoji.

Earnest and sarcastic, from the start

Two proposals reached Unicode in 2019, and both expected the sarcasm. Jay Peters’s (L2/19-400, March 2019) listed respect, homage, acknowledging an arrival or a departure, and military ideas, and said a single saluting face could also express “a sarcastic departure or goodbye”. Jennifer Daniel and Shiraz Fuman’s (L2/19-396, October 2019) gave acknowledging a message (“Can you pick up the kids from school?” “No problem”), “Thank you for your service” and “As you wish”, and described the design as showing respect “in both a formal and earnest manner or informal and sarcastic manner”. They pointed to the many Japanese kaomoji of a salute, such as (￣^￣)ゞ, and argued a salute emoji would help “for cultures where bowing is less common”. Their design doubles as a hand shading the eyes from the sun, or looking for someone. Both proposals cited Emojipedia’s lists of the most-requested emoji.

The Twitter layoffs, 2022

Emojipedia’s Keith Broni dates its viral moment to November 2022, when Twitter cut its staff after Elon Musk bought the company. Departing employees used 🫡 to say farewell, first on Twitter’s internal Slack and then in public posts, often beside a 💙 blue heart. Dictionary.com, quoting The New York Times, says it became a sign of solidarity among fired employees at Twitter, Meta and Amazon. Rolling Stone named it the best emoji of 2022.

Look-alikes

🖖 vulcan salute is the other salute on the keyboard: a hand on its own, from Star Trek, meaning “live long and prosper”. Peters’s proposal argued that its origin would not be known to everyone. 🤔 thinking face also has a hand on the face, but at the chin (Unicode’s keywords for it are chin, ponder and hmm), not at the brow.