Thinking Emoji

🤔 Thinking Face is a yellow face with a hand on its chin, one eyebrow up and the mouth pulled to the side: the picture of someone weighing a thought. It was added in Unicode 8.0 in 2015 and quickly became the default "hmm" of the internet. In a straight sense it means I'm considering this or good question; in a crooked sense it means something doesn't add up, and from a friend it is often gentle sarcasm.

🧐 Face with Monocle is 🤔's posher cousin: scrutiny, inspecting the details, "let me take a closer look at this". 🤨 Face with Raised Eyebrow drops the hand and keeps the doubt, so it reads as scepticism or sus, a silent "really?". Both arrived in Unicode 10.0 in 2017, and 🤨 is still nicknamed the Colbert emoji after the TV host's trademark look.

The quieter end of the family is wondering rather than judging. 🫤 Face with Diagonal Mouth, from Unicode 14.0, is the "hmm, not sure about that" face. 😶‍🌫️ Face in Clouds is a head lost in fog: daydreaming, brain fog, zoning out mid-thought. 😔 Pensive Face is thinking that has turned sad, and 🤯 Exploding Head is the thought that was too big, "mind blown".

Thought bubble, light bulb and brain: the idea emoji

💭 Thought Balloon is the comic-strip cloud with a trail of little bubbles, the way cartoons have shown unspoken thoughts for a century. Send it alone to say "thinking about it", or put the thought after it: 💭🍕 is "thinking about pizza". It is also the usual emoji for "thinking of you", often as 💭❤️. Speech-shaped bubbles live in the Speech Bubble & Talking Emoji collection; the cloud is the one that means thought.

💡 Light Bulb is the idea itself. Cartoonists started drawing a lit bulb over a character's head in the 1920s, and the emoji keeps that meaning exactly: eureka, a tip, a bright idea, "wait, I know". 🧠 Brain, added in 2017, covers smarts, overthinking and memory: 🧠💪 for brainpower, 🧠🔥 for a brain running hot, 🧠🚫 for "brain not working".

A few objects say what kind of thinking is going on. 🧩 is figuring out how the pieces fit, ⚖️ is weighing two options, ⏳ is "still thinking, give me a moment", 🧮 is working the numbers, and 📝 📚 are writing it down and reading it up. 🙋 raises a hand with a question, ☝️ makes a point, and 🤷 is the honest end of a long think: "no idea".

The 🤔 thinking emoji meme

Around 2016 the thinking face stopped being neutral online. Posting 🤔 under a claim became a way to say "makes you think" without saying anything, and strings of 🤔🤔🤔 answered dubious statements everywhere from Twitter to group chats. The pose was easy to parody, so edited versions spread: stretched, melted or many-handed thinking faces, and on Discord the squashed custom emoji "thonk" and its family, which servers still use as a reaction for mock deliberation.

Context decides how 🤔 lands. Under a question it is sincere. Under a boast or an excuse it is a raised eyebrow in disguise. If you want to look thoughtful rather than doubtful, 💭 or 🧐 are safer, and if you genuinely do not know, 🤷 is friendlier than a lone 🤔. Many chat apps also turn :thinking: or :thinking_face: into the emoji as you type.

Question mark emoji and the marks that answer them

❓ Red Question Mark is the loud "what?" or "why?", and ❔ White Question Mark is the same question said softly, usually drawn grey or outlined. ⁉️ Exclamation Question Mark is "wait, what?!", shock and confusion together. ❗ and ❕ are the matching exclamation marks, handy for the moment the answer arrives. 🤔❓ is "I'm wondering", ❓❓❓ is "please explain", and 🤷❓ is "who knows?".

Text symbols give you more shades than the keyboard ?. The interrobang ‽ was invented in 1962 by the American advertising executive Martin K. Speckter to combine ? and ! in one glyph; ⸘ is its upside-down Spanish-style partner. ⁇ doubles the question, ⁈ swings from question to surprise, and the backwards ⸮ was proposed centuries ago as an irony mark. ¿ opens a Spanish question, ؟ is the Arabic question mark, which faces the other way because Arabic runs right to left, and the Greek question mark ; looks exactly like a semicolon.

For the thinking that reaches a conclusion there are the logic marks: ∴ therefore, used since the 1600s, ∵ because, and ∎, the little tombstone that ends a proof, Q.E.D. An ellipsis … is a thought trailing off, and ⋯ is its centred mathematical twin. For comic-style thinking in plain text there are 🗬 🗭 thought bubbles and 🗰 🗱 mood bubbles from the Unicode pictograph block; they show as outlines rather than colour, which is exactly why they work in usernames and bios.