Face With Open Mouth Emoji

A yellow face with small, round eyes and a large, open mouth shaped like an O. It's the face you make when you hear something unexpected, walk into a surprise party, or see a price tag you weren't prepared for.

😮 sits in the middle of the surprise spectrum. It's more than 😯 hushed face (which is a raised-eyebrow "oh?") but less than 😲 astonished face (full startle) and way less than 😱 (actual horror). It's the emoji version of :O:O, the text emoticon people have been typing since the 1990s.

There's a design detail most people don't notice: Apple's 😮 looks surprised while Samsung's looks charmed, as if it just saw its crush. Same codepoint, different emotion. If you send 😮 meaning "I'm shocked" from an iPhone, a Samsung user might read it as "I'm smitten." It's one of the more significant cross-platform interpretation gaps in the emoji set.

😮 is a reaction emoji. People don't initiate conversations with it. They respond to something unexpected, a plot twist in a story someone's telling, a photo reveal, a piece of gossip. On Twitter/X, it shows up in reply threads to news and announcements. On Instagram and TikTok, it appears in comments under reveal videos, surprise proposals, and glow-up transformations.

In group chats, 😮 is often the first response when someone drops unexpected news. It buys time while you process. "She said WHAT 😮" or just 😮 by itself, letting the surprise speak.

On Slack and Teams, it's used more sparingly. A 😮 reaction to a company announcement reads as genuine surprise. Too many 😮 reactions to routine updates starts looking performative. Save it for when something actually catches you off guard.

On Facebook, 😮 has a second life as the "Wow" reaction, one of seven official reactions alongside Like, Love, Haha, Care, Sad, and Angry. Facebook reactions account for only about 3% of all interactions (the rest are likes, comments, and shares), but Wow carries disproportionate algorithmic weight. Posts that generate Wow reactions get boosted in the feed because Facebook reads surprise as high-quality engagement.

😮 is one of the original emoji faces. It was part of Unicode 6.1 in 2012 and included in Emoji 1.0 in 2015, but the face it represents goes back much further.

The text emoticon :O:O (and its variation :-O:-O) has been used to express surprise since the early days of internet chat. It's a direct visual representation of the physical reaction to shock: mouth drops open, eyes go wide. Simple, universally readable, and effective in any typeface.

What makes 😮 notable in the emoji set is that it became a building block. In 2020, Unicode approved 😮‍💨 (Face Exhaling), a ZWJ sequence that combines 😮 Face with Open Mouth + a zero-width joiner + 💨 Dashing Away. The resulting emoji shows a face breathing out heavily, used for sighs, relief, and exhaustion. 😮 is one of the few face emojis that serve as a base component for another emoji.

The Samsung design controversy is worth noting. For years, Samsung's version of 😮 has looked less surprised and more charmed or smitten, with softer eyes and a mouth that reads more as "oh" (pleased) than "OH" (shocked). On Apple and Google, it's clearly surprise. On Samsung, it's closer to admiration. This means a text sent as "I can't believe this 😮" from an iPhone arrives looking more like "I'm impressed by you 😮" on a Samsung Galaxy. Same Unicode codepoint, different emotional payload.

Part of Unicode 6.1 (2012) as U+1F62EU+1F62E FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of the Smileys & Emotion category, face-concerned subcategory. CLDR short name: "face with open mouth." Keywords: face, mouth, open, sympathy.

1. 2012Included in Unicode 6.1 as U+1F62E FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH
2. 2015Standardized in Emoji 1.0↗
3. 2015Android 6.0.1 redesigns the related Hushed Face 😯 to remove its zipper-mouth, distinguishing it from 🤐↗
4. 2016Facebook launches Reactions including the "Wow" button, effectively giving 😮 a permanent home in the platform's UI↗
5. 2018Surprised Pikachu meme goes viral on Tumblr/Reddit, permanently linking the 😮 face to ironic surprise↗
6. 2020Becomes base component of ZWJ sequence 😮‍💨 Face Exhaling (Emoji 13.1), which drives a search interest surge for the parent emoji

The cross-platform problem with 😮 isn't just cosmetic -- it's genuinely different emotional content. A University of Minnesota study found that people disagreed on emoji sentiment 25% of the time when viewing the same rendering. When sender and receiver saw different platform renderings, a follow-up study found misinterpretation jumped by 34%. That's not a rounding error.

For 😮 specifically, the gap is wider than most. Apple renders it as genuine shock: wide eyes, sharp O-mouth, the face of someone who just heard bad news. Samsung renders it closer to charmed admiration: softer eyes, a gentler mouth, the face of someone who's impressed by what they're seeing. Google's version splits the difference. So an iPhone user texting "you did WHAT 😮" intends alarm. A Samsung user receiving it sees something closer to flattery.

There's also a generational divide forming. 74% of Gen Z users use emojis differently from their intended meanings, and the surprise category is no exception. Millennials still reach for 😮 when they're genuinely surprised. Gen Z increasingly prefers ironic alternatives: 👁👄👁 for shock, 💀 for "I'm dead," or just the word "WHAT" in all caps. 😮 isn't disappearing from younger users' keyboards, but it's drifting toward a more earnest, almost retro vibe that Gen Z tends to avoid.

• •😮 is part of the ZWJ sequence for 😮‍💨 (Face Exhaling), combining U+1F62EU+1F62E + zero-width joiner + U+1F4A8U+1F4A8. It's one of only a handful of face emojis that serve as building blocks for other emojis. Most faces are endpoints. 😮 is infrastructure.
• •The text emoticon :O:O predates the emoji by over two decades. Scott Fahlman proposed emoticons in 1982, and variations like :O:O for surprise appeared shortly after on Usenet and IRC. The emoji is just the emoticon with a face.
• •Samsung's 😮 has looked more charmed than surprised for multiple design generations. Apple's version has wider eyes and a sharper expression of shock. A 2020 study found that up to 30% of users misinterpret emoji meaning based on design alone, and a 2023 follow-up put the confusion rate at nearly 40% for cross-device rendering differences.
• •😮 belongs to the face-concerned subcategory in Unicode, alongside 😱 and 😧 (anguished face). Its CLDR keywords include "sympathy," which is an underused interpretation: 😮 can express "oh no, I'm sorry that happened" as well as "wow, I didn't expect that."
• •A University of Minnesota study surveyed 436 people and found that when participants rated the same emoji, they disagreed on whether the sentiment was positive, neutral, or negative 25% of the time. Cross-platform, agreement dropped to 41%. 😮 is one of the worst offenders because Samsung's "charmed" rendering is emotionally different from Apple's "shocked" rendering.
• •The Surprised Pikachu meme originated from a Tumblr post on September 26, 2018. The screenshot comes from Pokemon S1E10 at the 3:05 mark -- Pikachu was slightly out of focus in the shot, which accidentally gave it a simplified, universally readable expression. It became the most-used meme of 2018 despite only existing for the last three months of the year.
• •92% of social media users incorporate emojis daily as of 2026. But within that 92%, the generational split matters: millennials still use 😮 sincerely, while 74% of Gen Z uses emojis differently from their intended meanings. For Gen Z, surprise is more likely 💀 or 👁👄👁 than 😮.

• •Sending 😮 alone in response to bad news can read as either sympathetic ("oh no") or insensitive ("that's it? just an emoji?"). If someone shares something difficult, follow the 😮 with words.
• •Using 😮 sarcastically doesn't land as cleanly as 😱 or 🤯 because the face is too neutral. If you want to mock-surprise someone, 😱 or the Surprised Pikachu meme image work better.
• •Reacting 😮 to every message in a group chat dilutes its impact. If everything is surprising, nothing is.

• •The Surprised Pikachu meme (2018) became the most-used meme of 2018 despite only emerging on September 26. The screenshot comes from Pokemon S1E10 ("Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village", aired June 3, 1997) at the 3:05 mark -- Pikachu was slightly out of focus in the shot, which gave it a simplified, meme-ready expression. Tumblr user popokko posted the first version and gained 223,000+ notes. Within a week it hit Reddit, 4chan, Twitter, and Facebook. The meme's formula is sarcastic predictability: set up an obvious outcome, show Pikachu looking surprised anyway. It turned 😮 from a reaction into a punchline.
• •Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893) is the art-world ancestor of every open-mouthed face in the emoji set. The painting's agonized figure with hands on cheeks directly inspired 😱, but the general open-mouth shock concept connects to 😮 too. The key difference: Munch's figure is screaming outward. 😮 is absorbing inward. One is expressing horror, the other is processing surprise.
• •Facebook's "Wow" reaction (2016) gave 😮 a permanent role in one of the world's largest platforms. Unlike other reactions that were just emoji-flavored Like buttons, Wow carried algorithmic weight -- Facebook's systems treated surprise as a signal of engaging content and boosted Wow-heavy posts in the feed.

• •U+1F62EU+1F62E. No variation selector needed.
• •On Slack: :face_with_open_mouth::face_with_open_mouth: or :open_mouth::open_mouth:. On GitHub: :open_mouth::open_mouth:. On Discord: :open_mouth::open_mouth:.
• •😮 is the base component of the ZWJ sequence U+1F62E U+200D U+1F4A8U+1F62E U+200D U+1F4A8 (😮‍💨 Face Exhaling). If building emoji parsers, handle the ZWJ sequence first to avoid matching the base emoji alone.
• •Be aware of the Samsung rendering difference if your app displays platform-native emoji. A surprise intent can read as admiration on Samsung devices.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.