Green Salad

A salad, a lighter meal, or the decision to eat better.

The picture is a bowl of lettuce and other raw vegetables, usually with tomato and often cucumber; some designs add a fork. Nothing hot, nothing heavy. That makes 🥗 the emoji of the virtuous choice: it tags a healthy lunch, a diet day, a meal-prep Sunday, a New Year resolution or a "back on track" message after a weekend of takeaway. Fitness accounts pair it with workout emoji to mean the eating half of getting in shape.

It also stands in for plant-based food in general. Vegans and vegetarians use it the way others use 🍔 or 🥩: "🥗 place for dinner?" means a restaurant with good vegetable options, not necessarily salad. The joke side is "rabbit food": someone sending 🥗 after you order chips is teasing you, or themselves, about being good.

When is 🥗 a dirty joke?

Only when the surrounding chat is already sexual.

In American English, "tossing (someone's) salad" is slang for a sexual act involving the backside, and 🥗 can carry that joke, especially next to 🍑 or 😏. The slang is well known in the United States and far less so elsewhere, so many English speakers never read the bowl that way at all. In recipes and food talk, "toss the salad" is still just mixing it. On its own, or in a lunch message, 🥗 is lunch. Don't turn a colleague's salad into a proposition.