What ๐ฟ means
Usually not โ it's costume anger, not a real fight. Plain anger has plainer faces, like or . The horns turn irritation into a cartoon villain, so ๐ฟ after a small gripe ("the wifi again ๐ฟ") exaggerates for effect. The costume drops when it follows a serious complaint aimed at you.
Where did the angry imp come from?
It comes from two Japanese phone carriers, au by KDDI and SoftBank. Before emoji were standardized, carriers in Japan drew their own pictograms to add tone to short texts and mobile email. This little devil existed in KDDI's and SoftBank's sets; the third big carrier, NTT DoCoMo, had no match for it.
SoftBank's 1999 version was a full-body blue demon with wings, a tail and long hornlike ears. au by KDDI's 2002 version showed a small creature holding what looks like a staff.
By 2015, a Unicode review recorded a split: Apple and Twitter drew an angry face, while Android, Windows, Samsung, KDDI and SoftBank drew more storybook imp art. The same ๐ฟ could look furious on one phone and impish on another.
Cartoon villain by default; sharper when the message targets a person.
After a serious complaint aimed at someone, it can read as a taunt; add words if you're joking.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsOverstated irritation, played for effect.
Don't confuse it with
2
Combination ideas
4Worth knowing
- ๐ฟ is a single code point, so it survives copying through almost anything โ old databases, SMS gateways, printer drivers.
Questions people ask
1What's the difference between ๐ฟ and ?
Staging vs swearing. has symbols over its mouth for literal cursing; ๐ฟ dresses frustration up as a cartoon devil.
More like this
12
Collections with ๐ฟ
10
How to type or find ๐ฟ
- Also called
- imp ยท angry devil
- Search it as
- devil ยท demon ยท devil emoji ยท devil face ยท little devil ยท mad ยท evil
- Type it as
- :imp:
- Around since
- 2010 ยท Emoji 0.6
- Shows up on
- Every phone ยท iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux
:imp:Common shortcode in Slack, GitHub, Discord, Mattermost and other chat apps; a few apps use a different name.👿Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.