Scared & Nervous Emoji

😨 Fearful Face is the plain scared emoji: raised brows, wide eyes, a small open mouth, and on most platforms a pale blue forehead, as if the blood has drained from it. It is fear you can still talk through: a horror trailer, a dentist appointment, a message that starts with "we need to talk". 😰 Anxious Face with Sweat is the same blue face with a single bead of sweat running down it, and its Unicode name says what it is for: Face with Open Mouth and Cold Sweat. That is dread rather than fright, the stomach-drop before results come out or a flight takes off.

😱 Face Screaming in Fear is the loud one. The face goes white or blue, the mouth is a wide oval, and on most platforms two hands are pressed to the cheeks, a pose that gets compared to Edvard Munch's painting The Scream. In practice it is used far more for "OMG" than for terror: a surprise price, a plot twist, a friend's news. If you want unmistakable fear, pair it with the thing you are afraid of, 😱🕷️ or 😱👻. 🙀 Weary Cat is its cat version; the official name says weary, but every major platform draws it screaming with its paws on its cheeks, so people use it as the cute scared cat.

Between those sit the open-mouthed worried faces. 😧 Anguished Face and 😦 Frowning Face with Open Mouth are the "oh no" pair, a gasp of dismay at bad news, and 😟 Worried Face is the lowest setting, brows knitted, mouth turned down, concerned rather than frightened. All three joined in Unicode 6.1 in 2012, a year after the big first emoji set that brought 😨 😰 and 😱. 🫨 Shaking Face, approved in Emoji 15.0 in 2022, is the newest member: a face blurred by trembling, used for shock, for being "shook", for an earthquake, or for shaking with nerves.

Nervous emoji: grimaces, nervous laughter and the sweat drop

There is no single official "nervous emoji", so people have built one out of several. 😬 Grimacing Face, the clenched-teeth smile, is the one most keyboards show for "nervous": awkward, yikes, I-hope-this-is-fine. 😅 Grinning Face with Sweat is nervous laughter, a smile with a drop of sweat, the "haha… anyway" of someone who got away with something or wishes they had. 😓 Downcast Face with Sweat (Unicode name Face with Cold Sweat) is stress without the smile, and 😥 Sad but Relieved Face has the same drop after the worst has passed, a quiet "phew".

Hiding is nervous too. 🫣 Face with Peeking Eye, added in Emoji 14.0 in 2021, covers its face but keeps one eye open: too scared to watch, too curious to look away. 🙈 See-No-Evil Monkey does the same job with a cuter animal, and 🫦 Biting Lip is the nervous lip-bite when it is not flirting. People searching for a nail-biting emoji are out of luck, there isn't one; 😬 or 🫦 with 😰 is as close as the keyboard gets.

For anxiety that has gone past a moment, the newer faces fit better. 🫠 Melting Face is slowly dissolving under the pressure, 😶‍🌫️ Face in Clouds is brain fog and dissociation, 🫥 Dotted Line Face is wanting to disappear, and 😵‍💫 Face with Spiral Eyes is "spiralling". 🤢 Nauseated Face covers being sick with nerves, 😖 and 😣 are the scrunched-up faces of bracing for something, and 😮‍💨 Face Exhaling is the long breath out when it is finally over. For the warmer, longer side of this, see the Mental Health & Healing Emoji collection.

What fear does to the body, and the things we are afraid of

The emoji that make a scared message physical are the body ones. 💦 Sweat Droplets and a single 💧 Droplet are nervous sweat; 💓 Beating Heart, drawn with motion lines, is a pounding heart; 👀 Eyes are watching something you would rather not. 🤞 Crossed Fingers is the nervous wait for results, 🫷🫸 the two Pushing Hands from Emoji 15.0 say "stay back", and 🏃💨 is running away. 🕳️ Hole is the place you would like to crawl into, ⏳ and ⏰ are the waiting and the deadline that cause most everyday dread, and 🔓 Unlocked is there for the "new fear unlocked" meme.

Then there is what scares people: 👻 ghosts, 💀 and ☠️ skulls, 🧟 zombies, 🧛 vampires, the Japanese 👹 ogre and 👺 goblin masks, 🤡 clowns and 👽 aliens. The creepy-crawlies are the most searched of all: 🕷️ Spider and 🕸️ Spider Web (both from Unicode 7.0 in 2014), 🐍 snake, 🦂 scorpion, 🪳 cockroach, 🐀 rat, 🦇 bat, 🐺 wolf and 🦈 shark. 💉 Syringe stands for a fear of needles, and 🔪 🩸 💣 are the horror-movie props. Dark places finish the picture: 🏚️ a derelict house, 🌫️ fog, 🌩️ lightning, 🌚 the creepy new-moon face, a 🕯️ candle or a 🔦 flashlight for a ghost story. The full spooky set, pumpkins and witches included, is in the Halloween Emoji collection.

Alarm signs give a scared message urgency. ⚠️ Warning (a text symbol since Unicode 4.0, an emoji since 6.0), 🆘 SOS Button, 🚨 Police Car Light and ‼️ ❗ ⁉️ raise the volume; 🛑 ⛔ ☢️ ☣️ mark danger itself. 🚩 Triangular Flag became "red flag" in the October 2021 meme and now means a warning sign about a person. ☡ Caution Sign and 🕱 Black Skull and Crossbones are plain text versions that stay black and white where emoji would not fit; the whole set of no and danger signs has its own Warning & Prohibited Sign Emoji collection.

Scared text faces: ((((；゜Д゜)))) and other kaomoji

Japanese text faces had scared covered long before colour emoji. The classic is ((((；゜Д゜)))), known as gakuburu from gakugaku buruburu, knees knocking and body shivering; the stacked brackets are the shaking. Its mouth is Д, the Cyrillic capital letter De, chosen only for its shape, a wide-open screaming mouth. The small ゜ marks are handakuten, the circle that turns は into ぱ in Japanese, used here as eyes popped wide, and the fullwidth ； semicolon is a drop of sweat running down the face. ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ is the arms-up panic version, with the katakana ヽ and ノ as flailing arms and the halfwidth ﾟ as eyes. (;´Д`) uses ´ and ｀ as worried brows and the ASCII semicolon as sweat.

A startled face starts with Σ, the Greek capital sigma, as in Σ(°ロ°) or Σ(ﾟДﾟ): the jagged letter stands for the jolt of a fright, and ロ (katakana Ro) or 口 (the Chinese character for mouth) is a mouth frozen in a square. Wide staring eyes come from ⊙, ◉, ʘ and the two-eyed Cyrillic Ꙫ, as in (⊙_⊙) and (ʘ_ʘ), while ︵ and ﹏ make a wobbling, miserable mouth: (⊙﹏⊙). Every one of these parts is in the grid above, so you can copy a finished face from the combos or build your own; the general-purpose kit is on the Kaomoji Symbols page.