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🌠 Shooting Star emoji

[shoot-ing stahr ih-moh-jee]

What does 🌠 Shooting Star emoji mean?

🎶 When you wish upon a 🌠 🎶

The shooting star emoji can give you a free wish, just like a real shooting star, or stand in for any ole star, literal or figurative. In this way, the shooting star emoji can indicate nighttime, outer space, and sparkly displays like fireworks. It can also convey romance and affection (“seeing stars”).

One special use of the shooting star emoji is in reference The More You Know, a public service announcement series from NBC, popular in the 1990s and featuring a shooting star icon. People post “the more you know” and 🌠 online when delivering some feel-good life-lesson or ironic observation.

Where does 🌠 Shooting Star emoji come from?

It was 2010 when the shooting star emoji was approved under Unicode 6.0. On many platforms, including Apple, the shooting star emoji appears as a star in a blue box, representing the night sky. On other platforms, such as Google, the star stands alone. On all platforms, though, the yellow-gold star moves from the upper-righthand direction to the lower-lefthand corner, as indicated by the trail in its wake and shown in the screenshot from Emojipedia below.

The shooting star emoji is located in different categories on different platforms. On Apple devices, this emoji sits beside the fireworks emoji 🎆 and the sparkler emoji 🎇 in the Travel & Places section. Android users will find it next to the white medium star emoji ⭐ and the glowing star emoji 🌟 in the Animals & Nature section. So, while a shooting star is decidedly a natural celestial phenomenon, Apple users may be more inclined to use it with its neighboring emoji exploders when keyboard-smashing.

Examples of 🌠 Shooting Star emoji

Good Night 💤🌙  😊 Sweet Dream 🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠...
@zaherofc, June, 2018
Pretty sure I’m the only girl who can’t stand a clingy guy. Like / Let me have my spaaaaccceeeee 👽🌠 🌌☄💫⭐⚡🌓🌔🌙🌚
@LegsDru, April, 2018
Happy 4th of July America ...🎇🌠 🎆 Spending my days playing an 18th century immigrant has given me even more insight to the birth of the America we know today, it’s beauty and its complexity.. May it continue to be a place of hope, diversity and compassion for ALL 🇺🇸❤🇺🇸
@caitrionambalfe, July, 2018

Who uses 🌠 Shooting Star emoji?

The shooting star emoji can be used in the same way as an actual shooting star—to make a wish, referencing the popular custom immortalized in song in Disney’s 1940 Pinocchio. No data yet on whether wishes made on the shooting star emoji are more or less likely to come true than those made on an actual shooting star.

It’s also common to see the shooting star emoji in strings of celestial emoji. Users in these cases are often discussing bedtime and nighttime, when shooting stars are visible. Other times, people use the shooting star for actual, honest-to-goodness stars.

Shooting stars are a rare and beautiful sight, so it’s no surprise the shooting star emoji gets used in expressions of affection for significant others and celebrity crushes.

The luminescence of the shooting star emoji also comes in handy during fireworks-themed holidays such as New Year’s Eve or Day, US Independence Day, or Chinese New Year.

rooftop fireworks with my faves @izzi_solomon @nicole_lushxio @paques_ @cortesjues 🎆✨💥💫🌠

A post shared by mallory dana levy (@malloryinnewyork) on

Finally, since 1989, NBC has been running The More You Know, a series of PSAs. They usually spotlight a celebrity delivering a pro-social message (e.g., stay in school) capped with a theme jingle and a rainbow-tailed shooting star under the catchphrase “The More You Know.” The PSAs became widely parodied in popular culture, which extended to memes in the 2000s. The shooting star emoji is not to be left out on the joke or allusion. Users will reference the The More You Know series with the shooting star emoji and some kernel of wisdom. Oftentimes the lesson is just an ironic insight or comment, but sometimes the message is earnest.

NOTE

This is not meant to be a formal definition of 🌠 Shooting Star 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 🌠 Shooting Star emoji that will help our users expand their word mastery.