plural emoji or emojis
Definition of emoji
: any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, email, and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc.
The function of emoji, as [emoji developer Shigetaka] Kurita describes it—adding subtle emotional emphasis to a sentence in text—isn't too different from that of emoticons, the frowny and smiley faces that people have been making out of punctuation since the mid-1990s.— Britt Peterson
— compare emoticon
Test Your Vocabulary
Great Words for Scrabble
-
- Which of the following Q-without-U words means the number five in cards or dice?

Test your visual vocabulary with our 10-question challenge!
TAKE THE QUIZ
A daily challenge for crossword fanatics.
TAKE THE QUIZLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share emoji
Time Traveler for emoji
The first known use of emoji was in 1997
See more words from the same year