What 😰 means
The nervous, stressed face — sweat from fear, not heat. Wide eyes, a bead of cold sweat, mouth flat or hanging open, nothing to soften it. It sits heavier than worried face and stops short of screaming face: the gulp before the scream.
What does it mean when someone sends you 😰?
Read it as sincere, not sarcastic. Sent alone mid-chat, it's a check-in cue: they're stressed and want a 'you okay?', not a lol.
Stack a few under a deadline or exam countdown and the tone flips to shared dread, everyone performing panic together. Read the thread before deciding which one you got.
Where did 😰 come from?
From Japanese comics, where a sweat drop means strain. In manga, sweat can mark anxiety, surprise or tension rather than heat; a 1993 manga example already uses it that way. The emoji sets Japanese mobile networks used before Unicode had matching faces meaning impatience (KDDI) and fluster (SoftBank). Unicode's 2010 date marks the standard character, not the start of the convention.
Defaults to sincere, so keep it out of banter you don't mean seriously.
Used as a joke in a serious moment, it can read as mocking someone's real anxiety.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsGenuine anxiety — a check-in cue, not a punchline.
Don't confuse it with
5
Combination ideas
3Worth knowing
- In Windows 8.1 and Samsung TouchWiz 7.1 artwork, 😰 looked more excited than anxious, so older devices could send a mixed signal.
Questions people ask
3Is it rude to send someone 😰?
No. It reads as concern or shared nerves; the only miss is using it as a punchline when someone is actually upset.
Does 😰 mean someone is literally sweating?
No. It's a stress signal, not a temperature one — for real heat, people use hot face.
Is 😰 the crying emoji?
No. That's a sweat drop, not a tear — for crying, people use or .
More like this
10
Collections with 😰
8
How to type or find 😰
- Also called
- cold sweat emoji · nervous face · stressed emoji
- Search it as
- cold sweat · anxious emoji · nervous · stressed · worried · panic · dread · nervous sweat
- Type it as
- :cold_sweat:
- Around since
- 2010 · Emoji 0.6
- Shows up on
- Every phone · iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux
:cold_sweat: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.