What 🍖 means
Usually, they mean food or appetite. After a recipe or barbecue invitation, take 🍖 literally: meat is on the menu.
Paired with a word like "starving", it can read as cartoon hunger: you could eat the whole thing, bone and all.
It looks like cartoon “manga meat,” not a real cut
In Japan this kind of drawing has its own name: manga niku, literally “manga meat” — the impossible hunk with a bone straight through the middle that hungry heroes tear into in comics and animation. Luffy, the rubber-bodied pirate of One Piece whose favourite food is meat, is a familiar eater of it, and The Flintstones served a similar caveman-feast fantasy to Western viewers.
The emoji's official name is plain “meat on bone,” but its look matches that tradition: it reads as a picture of a feast, not of a specific animal or cut.
Playful and cartoonish in food talk.
A standalone 🍖 in a flirt can sound crude.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
3Combination ideas
2Worth knowing
- 🍖 is a single code point, so it survives copying through almost anything — old databases, SMS gateways, printer drivers.
Questions people ask
3Is 🍖 sexual?
It can be. Flirting or body-focused jokes can give it that reading. Look at the surrounding words before assuming someone is making a sexual suggestion.
Why does 🍖 look like a steak?
Artwork differs. Android 4.4 drew it as a steak rather than a bone-in hunk; an older image can look like a different cut without being a different emoji.
What animal is 🍖?
None in particular. It does not specify beef, pork, lamb, or a particular cut. If the species matters for your meal, use words.
How to type 🍖
:meat_on_bone: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.