Emoji

Emoji (絵文字（えもじ）, Japanese pronunciation: [emodʑi]) are ideograms and smileys used in electronic messages and Web pages. The characters, which are used much like ASCII emoticons or kaomoji, exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. Some emoji are very specific to Japanese culture, such as a bowing businessman, a face wearing a face mask, a white flower used to denote "brilliant homework", or a group of emoji representing popular foods: ramen noodles, dango, onigiri, Japanese curry, and sushi.

Emoji have become increasingly popular since their international inclusion in Apple's iPhone, which was followed by similar adoption by Android and other mobile operating systems. Apple's OS X operating system supports emoji as of version 10.7 (Lion). Microsoft added monochrome Unicode emoji coverage to the Segoe UI Symbol system font in Windows 8 and added color emoji in Windows 8.1 via the Segoe UI Emoji font.

Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, "picture") + moji (文字, "character"). The apparent resemblance to English "emotion" and "emoticon" is just a coincidence.

In the examples below, all emoji in body text and tables will be supplied by the default browser (and probably system) emoji font, and may appear different on devices running different operating systems. Separate pictures (such as that shown right) will appear the same for all viewers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji