An emoji (/ɪˈmoʊdʒiː/ ih-MOH-jee; plural emoji or emojis;[1] Japanese: 絵文字, Japanese pronunciation: [emoꜜʑi]) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation as well as to replace words as part of a logographic system.[2] Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, expressions, activity, food and drinks, celebrations, flags, objects, symbols, places, types of weather, animals and nature.[3]
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.[4] The first emoji sets were created by Japanese portable electronic device companies in the late 1980s and the 1990s.[5] Emoji became increasingly popular worldwide in the 2010s after Unicode began encoding emoji into the Unicode Standard.[6][7][8] They are now considered to be a large part of popular culture in the West and around the world.[9][10] In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named the Face with Tears of Joy emoji (😂) the word of the year.[11][12]
Hard on the heels of the emoticon comes the Japanese-born emoji, also a DIGITAL icon used to express emotion, but more sophisticated in terms of imagery than those that are created by pressing a colon followed by a parenthesis. Emoji is made up of the Japanese for picture (e) and character (moji), so its resemblance to emotion and emoticon is a particularly happy coincidence.