🧑 Adult emoji
[uh-duhlt] or [jen-der noo-truh l uh-duhlt ih-moh-jee]
What does 🧑 Adult emoji mean?
The adult emoji depicts—or at least tries to—the head of an adult grown-up.
Thanks to its short, boyish-looking hair on most platforms, people often use the emoji to stand for a generic male person, friend, or family member.
Related words:
- gender neutral
- man emoji
- woman emoji
- nonbinary gender
Where does 🧑 Adult emoji come from?
The adult emoji was launched in 2017 under Unicode 10.0. Officially called the adult emoji, it popularly goes by the gender-neutral adult emoji.
Across platforms, you’ll know this emoji by its yellow face and shortish brown or blonde hair, which is supposed to look like any adult. But, it actually ends up looking like a fresh-faced boy … slightly nervous on his first day of high school.
On most emoji keyboards, users can also change the skin tone of the adult emoji … if you want.
Examples of 🧑 Adult emoji
💯%, keep up the good work! 🧒👦🧑👧👨🧓👴🍺☕👌👍
🧑Will the liberal sexism against Hillary Clinton ever stop?🧑
I use to look that good! 30 years ago! 🇺🇸 Nothing wrong with beautiful patriot ladies! I like to think I still am! 🧑🙏🇺🇸🦅
Who uses 🧑 Adult emoji?
The adult emoji is used in text messages and social media to represent male or female adults or people in general, especially when people feel they’re adulting and have finally aged into adulthood:
I AM NOW 18🎉🎊🎈🙌🎂🔞🧑😀
The 2nd step in adulting BECOMING AN ADULT
Cant wait to sign my own forms— nathan middleton (@nathanjm000) July 23, 2017
Happy Birthday! Welcome to adulthood! 🧑🎂🎉
— Shadowcat (@Shadowcat96) December 24, 2017
But ultimately, the adult emoji’s intent of being gender neutral backfires. Since it still looks any old Joe Shmo out there, the emoji is often used to symbolize an adult male, often paired with another person emoji, such as a female or child.
Felt amazing to have my family at church today! Feels unfortunate that we didn’t think to take a picture! 👨🧑👶…🤦♂️🤦♀️
— //Coach Carter// (@joshuacl) December 18, 2017
NOTE
This is not meant to be a formal definition of 🧑 Adult emoji like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of 🧑 Adult emoji that will help our users expand their word mastery.
