Emoji dictionary
😂 Face With Tears of Joy emoji
[ feys with teerz uhv joi ih-moh-jee ]
What does 😂 Face With Tears of Joy emoji mean?
Face with tears of joy is an emoji that represents someone laughing so hard that tears are streaming down their face. It can be used as an emotional-tone marker to express amusement and joviality when someone says or does something funny or embarrassing.
Where does 😂 Face With Tears of Joy emoji come from?
While officially named face with tears of joy, people commonly refer to it as the crying laughing, laugh cry, laughing tears, LOL, or simply the laughing emoji or face. Face with tears of joy was included as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. It was also one of the first emoji available for iOS and OS X. Like all emoji, it was created based on a user suggestion.
The face with tears of joy emoji is used extensively across online communities, and it’s been shared over 1 million times on Instagram. In fact, the Oxford Dictionaries even named the face with tears of joy emoji its 2015 Word of the Year, the first-ever pictograph to win the prize. Citing the emoji’s sharp rise from the previous year, they chose face with tears of joy in part “because it was the most used emoji globally in 2015.”
'Wheel of Fortune' Player Has Gold Shower On the Brain via @TMZ https://t.co/XzxYf6wHlq😂😂🤣🤣😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/7E2PB0Z3mK
— Lady Beverley (@bossbev) October 5, 2018
In 2016, linguist Gretchen McCulloch reported that the face with tears of joy emoji was the most used emoji on its own, in multiple-emoji sequences, and in combination with other emoji. “It’s clear we love to laugh and communicate laughter digitally!” McCulloch said.
Examples of 😂 Face With Tears of Joy emoji
how does it feel @maddow to know that you committed a felony tonight, and prooved [sic] @realDonaldTrump pays more tax% than @BernieSanders??
Anyway, it’ll be fun……
Who uses 😂 Face With Tears of Joy emoji?
Often behaving like LOL or haha, the face with tears of joy emoji conveys varying degrees of amusement. People frequently string the face with tears of joy together as an emotional intensifier. The more faces, the more intense. And, the use of this emoji with tears, as opposed to other emoji depicting smiles, emphasizes (exaggerates?) the intended sense of glee or delight.
There’s actually a word for it??!! I’m off to buy more now 🏃♀️📚📖 😂😂😂 #tsundoku https://t.co/yYrsVZrbXc
— Debra K (@debsadac) October 15, 2018
Using the face with tears of joy emoji doesn’t necessarily mean the user’s literally laughing to the point of tears. Rather, the emoji can help lighten tone. Writing for Scientific American in 2016, Krystal D’Costa explained: “Much in the same way the Like button helped to confirm status and connections, the tears of joy emoji can be connective.” Face with tears of joy, D’Costa continued, can show empathy, soften emotions, lighten remarks, and facilitate communication.
While the face with tears of joy emoji generally has positive intent, it can also be used to mock or gloat over others’ misfortunes, as if laughing maniacally in their face.
Banksy might have just carried out the greatest ever troll of the art world 😂https://t.co/ae40tgwhVE
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 6, 2018
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of 😂 Face With Tears of Joy 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 😂 Face With Tears of Joy emoji that will help our users expand their word mastery.