Rooster

A male chicken, famous for crowing at sunrise and strutting about.

A rooster (British English also says cock, and cockerel for a young one) is the male of the domestic chicken. He has a big red comb and wattles, a long curved tail and a loud crow that English writes as cock-a-doodle-doo. He crows at dawn, which makes him the world's oldest alarm clock, and he struts and picks fights, which gives English words like cocky and cock of the walk. So 🐓 turns up for brutal early starts, countryside life, someone strutting after a win, and food posts about chicken.

Beyond the farmyard the bird is a badge. The Gallic rooster has been an emblem of France for centuries, born of a Latin pun: gallus meant both a Gaul and a rooster. It sits on the crests of the French football and rugby teams, so around a big match 🐓 means "come on, France". In Portugal the colourful Rooster of Barcelos, a painted ceramic bird from a folk legend about a condemned man saved by a roast rooster that crowed, is a national souvenir, and Portuguese users post 🐓 the same way.

It is also a zodiac animal. The Rooster is the tenth of the twelve animals of the Chinese calendar; recent Rooster years are 1981, 1993, 2005 and 2017, and the next is 2029. Around Lunar New Year, and in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese chats about birth years, 🐓 simply means "the Rooster year" or "I was born in a Rooster year".

What does 🐓 mean when someone sends it to you?

Almost always the bird, the morning or the team, not an innuendo.

Read the words around it. "🐓 5am again" is a groan about an early alarm; "🐓🇫🇷 allez!" is a sports fan; "🐓 year" is the zodiac. In English, and really only in English, 🐓 is sometimes a wink, because the word cock also means a penis, and a few people use the emoji to spell the rude word without typing it. That reading needs a flirty or joking message to carry it; a rooster on its own is just a rooster. If you want to be safe in a work chat or a family group, add a word of context.