emote
Americanverb (used without object)
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emotes,
present (3rd person singular)
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emoted,
past participle, past
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emoting
present participle
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to show or pretend emotion.
to emote over the beauties of nature.
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to portray emotion in acting, especially exaggeratedly or ineptly; behave theatrically.
The actress emoted for all she was worth.
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Digital Technology. (in an online chat or video game) to give a conventionalized descriptive account of an action or emotion or prompt one’s in-game avatar to perform an animated action or emotion using a command or code.
To emote, type a forward slash and one of the commands from the list in chat.
noun
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(in an online chat or video game) a typed command or code that is translated into a descriptive account of an action or emotion, or that causes one’s in-game avatar to perform an action or emotion.
Standard emotes in online video games allow you to cheer, greet, and thank other characters.
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(in a video game) the animation that is performed when such a code is entered.
The first thing I do in a new game is check out my character’s dance emote.
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(in an online chat) a posted image, especially on the Twitch streaming video channel, that has a fixed but nontransparent meaning in the video gaming community.
Classic emotes feature popular streamers making faces.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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emotesimple
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emotessimple
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have emotedperfect
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has emotedperfect
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am emotingprogressive
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are emotingprogressive
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is emotingprogressive
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have been emotingperfect progressive
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has been emotingperfect progressive
Past
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emotedsimple
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had emotedperfect
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was emotingprogressive
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were emotingprogressive
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had been emotingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of emote
An Americanism first recorded in 1915–20; back formation from emotion
Explanation
To emote is to express emotion, particularly when you're acting in a film or a play. If an actor doesn't emote, the audience can't tell how he's supposed to be feeling in a scene. When people emote, it sometimes appears overdone or melodramatic. Taking a feeling and exaggerating it so that an audience can understand the character's emotions is what actors do when they emote. The noun emotion came first, and the theatrical verb emote followed in the early twentieth century. The Old French root word is emouvoir, or "stir up," from the Latin emovere, "move out, remove, or agitate."
Vocabulary lists containing emote
5-letter words, List 2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It released the emote as part of a Charli XCX-themed concert within Dress to Impress, a popular game available on the platform.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2025
With the character’s green skin shrouded under shades of navy color grading, it’s almost impossible to see Erivo emote in scenes where it counts the most.
From Salon ● Nov. 19, 2024
The animators came up with different ways for her to emote by eroding part of her flame, getting smaller, getting thinner.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2023
Yeoh, given carte blanche to emote, showed that feeling could be conveyed in an acceptance speech that was largely polished and non-self-aggrandizing.
From New York Times ● Mar. 12, 2023
They brood; they emote; but the idea that they are murderous is a cultural libel.
From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz
She emotes, she has a developed backstory, and she delivers some of the film’s most compelling dialogue with confident gusto.
From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2025
“Fortnite” players can also purchase backpacks — “back bling” — and “Spider-Verse” emotes to taunt their opponents.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2023
For all of its motion, the whole work is restrained, reserved, well-behaved while the music emotes, soft-focused even after the scrim lifts.
From New York Times ● May 5, 2023
An editor helps cut together clips of her Twitch streams and format content for different platforms, and a graphic designer optimizes her YouTube thumbnails, creates custom-emoji-style reactions called emotes and animations.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 26, 2022
The same is true of the “cmonbruh” emote, prompting many streamers to ban the use of both emotes outright to prevent that kind of behavior.
From The Verge ● Jan. 5, 2022
At this point, everyone has already emoted to the ballads and swaggered to the raps, and all that’s left to do is jump and down belting, “Whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh ohh.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2023
And after he was right, he emoted just how we would feel, too.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 29, 2021
Demi Lovato emoted through part of her “Skyscraper,” about the aftermath of devastation.
From New York Times ● Mar. 30, 2020
As in her “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” confessionals, she rarely emoted while talking.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 7, 2020
Later, she had become a soubrette and a star in merry little plays in which she sang and danced and "emoted," all in one evening.
From My Actor-Husband A true story of American stage life by Anonymous
The incomparable star is a vision in studded white or powder-blue jumpsuits—cavorting, emoting, karate-chopping and spreading the bat wings of his sewn-on cape in a move that never fails to thrill the audience.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026
Songs like “No Good Deed” and “March of the Witch Hunters” are chopped up and rearranged to allow for more dialogue and less emoting, distending the film into a bloated heap.
From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2025
Theater can seem trivial to people, people standing onstage and emoting in some way, but it does so much for a person.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 14, 2025
What the state is wrestling with, and the public is emoting about, is the coming end of the internal combustion engine.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 1, 2023
Then she accompanied Miss Goodacre, who sang “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” in what I considered to be a completely indifferent voice, all the while emoting heavily in Harry’s direction.
From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
