What 🤥 means
They think your last claim is a stretch. Right after your story, 🤥 usually means 'yeah, right': joking disbelief from someone who's in on the joke. From someone you're arguing with, the same face can be a pointed 'you're lying'. Under the sender's own boast, it's a sheepish self-own that flags their fib before you can.
Is 🤥 okay to send at work?
No, keep it out of work chat. Among friends the long nose reads as roasting; to a boss, coworker or client it reads as calling them a liar. Save it for people who already know your sense of humor.
Why does the lying face have a long nose?
It's Pinocchio's nose, the best-known sign of lying. Pinocchio is the wooden puppet in Carlo Collodi's Italian children's story, first serialized in 1881. In the book the nose first grows while Geppetto carves him, before any lie, and grows after lies only occasionally: a magic detail, not the central lesson.
Disney's 1940 film made the growing nose the famous lie cue, and that film shapes most popular memory of the story. That is why the emoji's nickname, 'Pinocchio emoji', stuck.
Playful among friends who'll catch the sarcasm; risky anywhere the target might take it as a literal accusation.
To a boss or coworker it reads as calling them a liar.
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsDon't confuse it with
2Combination ideas
2Worth knowing
- 🤥 is a single code point, so it survives copying through almost anything — old databases, SMS gateways, printer drivers.
Questions people ask
1Why does 🤥 look different on other phones?
Every platform draws its own artwork for the same code point. The character you send is identical; Apple, Google, Samsung and WhatsApp each render it in their own style.
How to type 🤥
:lying_face:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.🤥Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.