Goblin

It is a tengu, a mountain spirit from Japanese folklore. Tengu live in the forests and peaks in Japanese tales. The older kind looks like a crow with a beak; the kind 👺 shows is the “great tengu”, a human face with red skin, bushy brows and an enormous nose. Masks of that face hang in mountain shrines, appear in festival processions and in Noh and kyōgen, Japan’s classical masked theatre, and are sold as souvenirs across the country. If you saw this face on a wall in a Japanese restaurant, it was a tengu mask.

In the stories tengu are proud, quick-tempered and fond of tricks: they lead travellers astray, mock arrogant monks and sometimes carry people off. They are also feared and respected as masters of the sword. The most famous, Sōjōbō of Mount Kurama near Kyoto, is said to have trained the boy who became the warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune. That mix of mischief, menace and skill is exactly the range the emoji carries.

The nose matters. In Japanese, “to become a tengu” (tengu ni naru) means to get big-headed, and “a high nose” means being proud. The emoji came to Unicode from Japanese phone carriers’ sets, which is why its shortcode calls it a Japanese goblin; “goblin” is the nearest English word, not a translation.

What does it mean when someone sends 👺?

Mischief, mockery or anger, and the surrounding words decide which. After a prank confession or a dare, 👺 adds a devilish grin. Beside a complaint about a boss, a referee or an ex, it reads as fuming or vengeful. Replying to someone who is deliberately stirring people up, it labels them a troll. People also send it to call someone cocky, which is the one reading that matches the Japanese idiom.

Sent alone, with no words, it is ambiguous: it could be “I am plotting something” or “I am furious”. When you receive a bare 👺 from someone you do not know well, ask rather than assume. Among friends it is almost always playful.