What 😫 means
Both: it is strain you can no longer hide, not drowsiness. The design is a face squeezing its eyes shut, eyebrows pulled down, mouth open as if mid-wail. That is the face you make when the third thing goes wrong before lunch, when the exam is tomorrow and you have read one page, or when you finally sit down after twelve hours on your feet. "Tired" in its name means worn down by life, the kind that makes you groan out loud.
In everyday chat it covers a whole cluster: exhausted, fed up, overwhelmed, stressed, "I can't anymore". A small Brazilian survey run in 2020 found people chose it for "frustrated" nearly as often as for "tired", which matches how it feels in practice. One historical wrinkle: the old Windows 8.1 design from 2013 drew it as a yawn, so screenshots from that era look sleepier than the face people send today. For actual sleepiness, and are the ones to reach for.
What does it mean when someone sends you 😫?
They are venting, usually about their own day, and want you to groan along. Read the words around it. "Double shift again 😫" is exhaustion; "the app crashed and deleted everything 😫" is frustration; "I have four deadlines Friday 😫" is overwhelm. In all three the sender is letting off steam, not asking you to fix anything. A good reply matches the groan or offers a little sympathy.
There is a lighter twist. Next to wanting or missing words it turns into comic longing: "I miss you 😫", "I want those shoes so bad 😫", "I need this weekend to come 😫". The face is the same, but the pain is the ache of wanting, played for drama. The tone is nearly always exaggerated and a bit theatrical, which is why it works between friends and reads oddly in a serious or formal message.
Casual and theatrical; perfect for venting to friends, too loud for work chats and too playful for real grief.
As a bare reply to someone else's bad news it can look like you are making their problem about you.
Part of collections
What it means when someone sends it to you
5 readingsA vent about the sender's own day, not a reaction to you; the surrounding messages settle which kind.
Don't confuse it with
4
Combination ideas
4Worth knowing
- Before Unicode encoded it in 2010, 😫 already existed in the private emoji sets of Japanese mobile carriers, which is why it belongs to the very first batch of Unicode emoji.
- The carrier KDDI labelled its version "enduring face" (gaman-gao), a gritted-teeth, pushing-through expression, while SoftBank called it simply a tired face.
Questions people ask
3Is 😫 a sad emoji?
Not really. It is frustration and exhaustion rather than grief. There are no tears, and the tone is "ugh, I'm done" rather than "I'm heartbroken". For sadness people use , or .
Does 😫 mean sleepy?
No. Despite the name, it shows someone groaning from strain, not nodding off. For sleepy or bored-tired, (sleeping) and (yawning) say it clearly.
Is it rude to send 😫?
Rarely. Between friends it is an ordinary vent. It only misfires when sent alone as a reply to someone else's problem, where it can read as making their news about your own feelings. Add a word of sympathy and it is fine.
More like this
12
Collections with 😫
8
How to type or find 😫
- Search it as
- exhausted · frustrated · overwhelmed · stressed · fed up · burnt out · worn out · ugh
- Type it as
- :tired_face:
- Around since
- 2010 · Emoji 0.6
- Shows up on
- Every phone · iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux
:tired_face:Common shortcode in Slack, GitHub, Discord, Mattermost and other chat apps; a few apps use a different name.😫Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.