What are emoticons in English?

An emoticon (/ɪˈmoʊtɪkɒn/, ə-MOH-tə-kon, rarely pronounced /ɪˈmɒtɪkɒn/, ih-MO-tih-kon), short for “emotion icon”, also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person’s feelings, mood or reaction, or as a …

Is emoji in the English dictionary?

Today is a tears-of-joy day for emoji. In a move that reflects the changing nature of communication — and the evolving role of dictionaries — Dictionary.com has officially added explanations for these little pictorial symbols, becoming the first major reference to do so.

What type of word is emoticons?

noun
A graphical representation, either in the form of an image or made up of ASCII characters, of a particular emotion of the writer.

What is emoticon example?

An emoticon ( /ɪˈmoʊtɪkɒn/) is a written symbol, often as 2 or 3 punctuation characters, that stands for the writer’s mood or facial expression. Some examples are: a smile “:-)” or wink “;-)” or frown “:(” or dog nose “:O” or le meme arrow “>” (see many other examples in text below).

What is emoticon language?

Emoticon is a programming language based on “emoticons”, or combinations of characters meant to look like facial expressions to convey appropriate emotion (where words fail to serve). In Emoticon these smileys are program instructions, while anything surrounding them is considered to be data.

Is emoticon a real word?

To use the dictionary definition, an emoticon smiley face fulfills only part of the definition of a word: It is a unit that functions as a principle carrier of communication, but it doesn’t consist of morphemes and cannot be spoken. Emoticons are not words.

What was the first emoticon?

humble smiley
On September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon professor Dr. Scott Fahlman invented the first emoticon: the humble smiley. Every September 19 — that’s today, by the way — Fehlman hands out smiley-face cookies at the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh. Now some 6 billion emoticons are sent a day.