Complete list of emoticons and their meaning

We published an article yesterday with a guide; how you can unveil a secret Emoticon Keyboard on your iPhone or other iOS devices adding Japanese Keyboard. But let me ask you if you really know what are those Emoticons you see on your iPhone or any other devices.

Don’t get confused between Emoticons and Emojis. You can understand Emojis easily as it is in the form of graphic, but Emoticons are a combination of some symbols. It can be learned by practice, and you need to remember. This is why Emojis are getting popular these days, and users are getting rid of Emoticons gradually.

Some Social Media Messaging app or Smartphones replace Emoticons with Emojis automatically. For example; if you type “:|” in iMessage on iPhone or Mac, it will replace it with Straight Face 😐 Emoji automatically. However, any device doesn’t recognize all of  the Emoticons, and it will be delivered to the receiver in the form of symbols (Emoticons). If the receiver doesn’t know what that means, he/she may try to google it, or just ignore. In the same way, you can’t send someone an Emoticon that you don’t understand.

Emoticons are also known as Textual Portrayals. Eastern and Western usage of Emoticons are not similar, and some forums also show it in a different way, like a Japanese forum known as 2Channel. Emoticons are basically our expression or feelings that we reveal to others in the form of Textual Portrait. The way our culture and the way of showing expression is not the same around the world, in the same way, Emoticons are not the same everywhere.

Related : Best Keyboards for Android

List of Emoticons and their meaning

Various emoticons may have one meaning, and there is a very large list of those Emoticons. Wikipedia has categorized them into different categories, like Western Emoticons, Eastern Emoticons, 2 Channel Emoticons etc.. Visit Wikipedia to get the list of Emoticons and its meaning. If you want to get the list of Unicode Emoticons, you can download this PDF File for free.