What Does 🥹 Mean?
Face Holding Back Tears captures that specific human experience of being so moved by something that tears are welling up but you're fighting them back. It's the emoji for when something is so beautiful, kind, or touching that you're on the verge. Introduced in 2021, it filled a gap in the emotional emoji vocabulary perfectly.
Cultural context: Extremely popular for reacting to wholesome content online. Used heavily in creator communities when fans want to express deep gratitude or being moved by someone's work.
When to Use 🥹
✓ Good for
- Reacting to something unexpectedly wholesome
- Expressing deep gratitude
- When you're genuinely moved but not crying
- Responding to kind gestures
✗ Avoid when
- Contexts where genuine sadness might be minimised
Example Usage
How 🥹 Looks on Different Platforms
Consistent quivering lower lip and glistening eyes across platforms. Apple's version has a particularly expressive mouth.
* Emoji appearance varies by platform and OS version. Shown above: how the emoji character renders in your browser per platform.
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Related to 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears
About the Face Holding Back Tears Emoji
The Face Holding Back Tears emoji (🥹) is one of the most recognised symbols in digital communication. Face Holding Back Tears captures that specific human experience of being so moved by something that tears are welling up but you're fighting them back. It's the emoji for when something is so beautiful, kind, or touching that you're on the verge. Introduced in 2021, it filled a gap in the emotional emoji vocabulary perfectly.
First introduced in Unicode 14.0 (2021), it belongs to the Smileys & Emotion category
of the Unicode Emoji standard. Its Unicode codepoint is U+1F979
and its Slack/Discord shortcode is :holding_back_tears:.
Whether you want to know what 🥹 means in a text, how it appears on iPhone vs Android, or when you should (and shouldn't) use it — this guide covers everything. Use the copy button above to instantly copy the Face Holding Back Tears emoji to your clipboard.