Hamburger

Almost always food: a burger, hunger for one, or a plan to eat. Nobody hides a secret meaning in it. People send 🍔 to say what they are eating, what they want to eat, or to vote when a group is deciding where to go. Restaurants and food trucks put it in posts and bios to say "we do burgers", and travellers drop it into holiday photos of diners and barbecues.

If it arrives while you are making plans, treat it as a suggestion. Answer with a place and a time, and the plan is made. Alongside 🍟 and 🥤 it means the whole fast-food meal; alongside 🤤 or 😋 it is a craving; under a photo of someone's dinner, a string of 🍔🍔🍔 is applause for the food, not an invitation.

The tone is relaxed and slightly indulgent. A burger is treat food in most of the world, so 🍔 often carries a wink: a cheat day, a Friday reward, comfort after a long week. It is harmless in a work chat about lunch and goes nowhere near anything serious.

Why does it look like a cheeseburger?

The toppings are the artist's choice, not part of the message. Most platforms draw a sesame-seed bun, a beef patty, a slice of melted cheese, lettuce and tomato, because that is the burger people picture first. The emoji's official name is still "hamburger", and nobody reads a slice of drawn cheese as "cheeseburger specifically". Use it for a plain burger, a veggie burger or a double with everything.

Those toppings once started a real fight. In 2017 people noticed that Google's version put the cheese under the patty, directly on the bottom bun, while Apple's put it on top. The internet argued about the correct order of a burger for days, and Google's chief executive joked that he would drop everything to fix it if everyone could agree on the right layering. A few weeks later Android 8.1 moved the cheese on top. The picture changed; what people mean by 🍔 did not.