[scatters]

Emoji are an advance over emoticons because they have a standardized description. For example, if you encounter you can find that it is U+1F625 DISAPPOINTED BUT RELIEVED FACE, allowing you to know that the sender intended to convey a combination of disappointment and relief.

[jimktrains2]

This? https://emojipedia.org/disappointed-but-relieved-face/ I always thought it was an emphatic sad, not relieved. Literally none of those emoji's look relieved. Even the Samsung one looks like it's wailing in grief.

I agree with GP, most of these https://emojipedia.org/google/ are indistinguishable to me. Almost none of them look like their name "GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES" looks to be in pain.

I realize that emojis are often replacing the body language queues we send each other, but they're significantly more ambiguous. There's maybe 5 faces :'( :( :) :* :/ that I use and that's about it. They seem to be sufficient to convey the additional emotional context for me.

[freehunter]

Yeah I've always thought that one was unbridled grief. Disappointed but relieved? How? How is that in any way disappointed but relieved? The face is sweating, which people do when they are nervous or anxious. The mouth is frowning, which people do when they are upset. The eyebrows are curved downwards which people do when they are sad. And in a lot of the representations, the drop of water is under the eye, signaling that the face is crying. There is not a single emotion that face is expressing that could be interpreted as positive like the word "relieved" indicates.

That face is not disappointed but relieved. That face is 100% stricken with grief. That's the emoji I send to my wife when she texts me and says she's having a bad day.

[kissickas]

There are many HNers who know much more about Japan than I do, but I'm pretty sure the tear on the side is meant to represent relief. Imagine it in an anime. I'm not sure why it's a frown and now a shocked face/smile, though.

Here's a short article I found on a few other misinterpreted emoji: https://www.wired.com/2015/05/using-emoji-wrong/

[astrobe_]

People don't know how to quote in mail and forum posts, and one expect them to use emoji "correctly"?

[nicky0]

You are right. I think emoji tend to develop meaning by being repeatedly used in a context. Their names are titles or identifiers but not helpful for meaning.

[freehunter]

Which kinda sucks, because if I don't know what a word means, I go to the dictionary. Someone using a word wrong is going to really throw me off if their usage doesn't match the dictionary definition. If I don't know what an emoji means, I'll look at the title. And it's likely something very different than the emotion trying to be portrayed.

[ucarion]

This isn't true in general. For instance, U+1F346 AUBERGINE ("the eggplant emoji") is at first glance merely a vegetable, but in practice its phallic shape means it's understood to represent a penis.

Similar things happen with other emojis -- for instance the one depicting a Peach. It's an old human tradition to make sexual puns out of our food. Since users see the pictures and not the underlying Unicode titles, users ascribe their own meaning to the images.

[CoryG89]

Wow, I didn't know about that one. Wonder if I'll get fired for spamming the eggplant in Slack later on.

[sorenjan]

Instagram blocked the eggplant emoji in in search back in 2015 [0], and there are vibrators that look like eggplants [1]. If you spam eggplants in a chat chances are the other participants will know the hidden meaning and wonder what you're trying to say.

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/29/technology/eggplant-instagra...

[1] https://emojibator.com/

[ddddddddq]

You will then refer to the standard to find U+1F351 PEACH and U+1F346 AUBERGINE (Eggplant), and be amazed at the bountiful harvest your friends have had this year.