What 🤸 means
A cartwheel: joy, or real gymnastics. Most designs show the figure mid-turn, upside down with legs in the air. The cartwheel is a basic gymnastics skill and the move children try on lawns and beaches, so the emoji fits gym class, tumbling practice, cheer training or a child cartwheeling round the garden. Figuratively it borrows the old picture of doing cartwheels for joy: livelier than 🎉, far livelier than 👍.
What does it mean when someone sends 🤸?
Usually that they're thrilled, for themselves or for you. After “I got the job”, “passed!” or “Friday!”, it is happy, bouncy body language. From someone who trains or coaches, it may just mean practice or a competition, so read the words around it. The tone is light and a bit theatrical, natural among friends and family. Placed after unwelcome news (“meeting moved to 7am 🤸”), it can be mock enthusiasm.
Playful and energetic, more theatrical than a thumbs-up; at home among friends and family.
After unwelcome news it can read as sarcasm rather than joy.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsEvery form of this symbol
18Don't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
2Worth knowing
- English names the move after a wheel, as do Spanish, French and German; Brazilians and Poles see a star, Danes a windmill.
- In 2023 a viral Philippine meme put 🤸 between every word of a Filipino line asking why a best friend is sad.
Questions people ask
2Is 🤸 a flip or a cartwheel?
A cartwheel. It turns sideways with the hands touching the ground; a somersault rolls forwards or backwards.
Can I pick a woman or a man doing the cartwheel?
Yes. There are woman and man forms and five skin tones; plain 🤸 is the gender-neutral version.
How to type 🤸
:person_doing_cartwheel: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.