Emoji dictionary

๐Ÿ–– Vulcan Salute emoji

[ vuhl-kuhn suh-loot ih-moh-jee ]

What does ๐Ÿ––ย Vulcan Salute emoji mean?

Live long and prosper, friends! If you ever need to spread the love to your geekier friends, then flash a ๐Ÿ––.

The Vulcan saluteย emoji,ย ๐Ÿ––, is perfect for showing your Star Trek cred or sci-fi pride more generally.

Related words

Beam me up, Scotty, โœŒ๏ธ Victory Hand emoji, fanfiction, Mary Sue

Where does ๐Ÿ–– Vulcan Salute emoji come from?

pink background with Vulcan salute emoji on it

The Vulcan Salute emoji is officially called the raised hand with part between middle and ring fingers emoji. And, that’s exactly what the emoji shows across platforms. Its default hue is yellow, but skin-tone modifiers allow users to change color.ย It joined emoji keyboards under Unicode 7.0 in 2014.

The emoji commonly goes by the Vulcan salute because the gesture was popularized by Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who used it as a greeting in the sci-fi franchise, Star Trek. Nimoy first used the gesture in the 1967 TV episode “Amok Time,” in which Spock comes into contact with other members of his Vulcan race.

Nimoy wanted the Vulcans to have a way of greeting one another similar to human hand gestures.ย In an interview with New York Times, Nimoy said that his Vulcan salute was inspired by a gesture that he witnessed during a Jewish religious service when he was a boy. Jewish priests perform the actual religious gesture with both hands to form the Hebrew letter shin,ย ืฉ.

The greeting Live long and prosper!ย has also accompanied the Vulcan salute ever since its debut in “Amok Time,” also inspired by Jewish scripture, with Deuteronomy 5:33 being the most cited inspiration for the phrase.

The Vulcan salute went memetic almost immediately after Nimoy’s first usage of the gesture. According to Nimoy, mere weeks after “Amok Time” aired, people were already using the gesture to greet him everywhere he went. The gesture was first popular among Star Trek fans but the gesture’s similarity to the popular V-shaped peace hand gesture (โœŒ๏ธ), both in finger placement and good-willed intent, helped it catch on outside that community.

The Vulcan salute was popular long before the rise of social media, so it comes as no surprise that the emoji version took off right away after Unicode added it on June 16, 2014.

Prior to that day, users had to make due with typographicalย substitutes.

Examples of ๐Ÿ–– Vulcan Salute emoji

I am the Spock of wind turbines. ๐Ÿ––  
@Rottoturbine, November, 2015
Live long and prosper. Happy #StarTrekDay to all. ๐Ÿ––
@DarthVader, May, 2018
The Doctor revealed his inner Trekkie 11 years ago today in Fear Her! ๐Ÿ––
@bbcdoctorwho, June, 2017
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Who uses ๐Ÿ–– Vulcan Salute emoji?

The Vulcan salute emoji is used anytime someone wants to flash the greeting and good wishes. It can beย Star Trek fans …

… or your non-Trekkie but self-avowed nerd friends. In this vein, the emoji can suggest anything “geeky” or “far out.”

The Vulcan salute emoji is also commonly used when tweeting about (or to) actors that appeared in Star Trek.

While the Vulcan salute emoji is widely used when discussing anything Star Trek related, such as old episodes or new films, it can also mark content dealing with science fiction works in general.

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Note

This is not meant to be a formal definition of ๐Ÿ–– Vulcan Salute 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 ๐Ÿ–– Vulcan Salute emoji that will help our users expand their word mastery.