Face With Thermometer Emoji

A yellow face with flushed red cheeks, furrowed brows, and a thermometer sticking out of its mouth. It's the universal "I'm sick" emoji, covering everything from a literal fever to calling in sick to cancel plans you never wanted to attend.

Emojipedia describes it as a face that "may be used to represent a hospital patient or person with a cold or flu." But it also notes a secondary meaning that surprises people: the emoji can be used figuratively to express finding something "hot," as in attractive. That second meaning shows up mostly in flirty contexts where someone drops a 🤒 after seeing a selfie, essentially saying "you're giving me a fever."

The emoji hit its stride during the COVID-19 pandemic. CNN reported that emoji usage on Google's Gboard keyboard surged over 60% between January and March 2020, with health-related emojis leading the spike. 🤒 became part of the pandemic vocabulary alongside 😷 and 🦠. A Japanese research study published in PMC even used patterns in 🤒 emoji usage on Twitter to predict COVID-19 case surges in Japan, finding that spikes in sick emoji tweets preceded official case count increases by several days.

🤒 lives in two worlds: genuine sick announcements and strategic excuse-making.

The genuine version is straightforward. "Can't make it tonight 🤒" or "day 3 of this flu 🤒" are standard sick texts. It's the emoji you send your boss on Slack when you're calling out (though HR experts generally recommend keeping sick day emails emoji-free in formal workplaces).

The strategic version is more interesting. 🤒 has become the polite bail-out emoji. When someone sends "think I'm coming down with something 🤒" on the night of a party they RSVPed to, there's about a 50/50 chance they're actually sick. It's become so associated with canceling plans that some friend groups treat it with playful skepticism.

On TikTok and Instagram, 🤒 shows up in "sick day aesthetic" content: cozy blankets, soup, Netflix. It also appears in thirst trap comments where the "you're making me sick (with desire)" angle plays on the fever metaphor.

Usually not flirty at all. But there's an exception: when someone sends 🤒 in response to an attractive photo, they're using the fever metaphor ("you're making me sick" = "you're so hot it's giving me a fever"). This usage is much less common than 🥵 for the same purpose, but it exists. Context makes the difference obvious: 🤒 after "I think I have the flu" is friendly. 🤒 after a selfie is flirty.

• •After a selfie or thirst trap = flirty (the fever metaphor)
• •After mentioning illness or symptoms = genuinely sick
• •When canceling plans = probably just sick (or avoiding you)
• •In a string with 💊🛏️ = definitely literally sick

🤒 was part of Unicode 8.0's 2015 expansion that added several "condition" faces to the emoji roster. Before 2015, the only sick-adjacent emoji was 😷, which was more about masks than illness. The Unicode Consortium recognized a gap: people needed a way to say "I have a fever" or "I'm sick in bed" without the mask connotation.

The emoji arrived alongside 🤕 (head bandage) and 🤢 (nausea, added in Unicode 9.0 the following year), forming a medical trio that covered different types of being unwell. The thermometer in the mouth is a universal symbol for checking temperature, immediately readable across cultures.

Its biggest moment came five years later. When COVID-19 hit in early 2020, 🤒 usage exploded. CNN reported that health-related emojis saw unprecedented spikes, with nearly one in five tweets containing an emoji during the pandemic (up from one in six the year before). Japanese researchers even found that tracking 🤒 usage on social media could predict COVID case surges days before official numbers confirmed them.

Approved in Unicode 8.0 (2015) as U+1F912U+1F912 FACE WITH THERMOMETER. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of a batch of new face emojis that included 🤕 Face with Head-Bandage, 🤑 Money-Mouth Face, and 🤓 Nerd Face.

The thermometer-in-mouth gesture is primarily a Western medical image. In Japan and much of East Asia, temperature is traditionally taken under the armpit, not orally, so the visual metaphor reads slightly differently. That said, the flushed cheeks and distressed expression are universally understood as "unwell."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 🤒 took on heightened significance globally. In countries with strict lockdown measures, it was sometimes used as a coded warning ("stay away, I might be contagious"). The emoji's meaning stayed consistent across cultures though, unlike more ambiguous faces. Sick is sick everywhere.

• •🤒 was approved in the same Unicode 8.0 batch as 🤑 Money-Mouth Face and 🤓 Nerd Face. The 2015 update added condition-specific faces that the emoji set had been missing.
• •Google's Gboard data showed emoji usage jumped over 60% between January and March 2020, with health emojis like 🤒 driving the surge. Nearly one in five tweets contained an emoji during the pandemic peak.
• •Unlike 🤮 and 🤢 which evolved strong figurative meanings ("that's disgusting"), 🤒 has stayed remarkably literal. Most people only use it when they're actually sick or pretending to be.

• •Sending 🤒 after someone's selfie without context can confuse them (are you sick? or complimenting them?). If you mean "you're hot," 🥵 is clearer.
• •Using 🤒 to cancel plans too frequently trains people to not believe it. The emoji equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.
• •In work contexts, some people read a single 🤒 as not taking the sick day seriously. If you're genuinely ill, use words in professional settings.

• •During COVID-19's first wave in early 2020, 🤒 became one of the most-used emojis on Twitter alongside 😷 and 🦠. CNN reported on World Emoji Day 2020 that health emojis dominated the year's usage trends.
• •A 2023 study published in Applied Intelligence used 🤒 emoji frequency on Japanese social media as a real-time epidemiological signal, finding it could predict COVID case surges before official reporting caught up.

• •🤒 is U+1F912U+1F912. Unicode name: FACE WITH THERMOMETER. CLDR short name: "face with thermometer." Common shortcodes: :face_with_thermometer::face_with_thermometer: (GitHub, Slack), :thermometer_face::thermometer_face: (Discord).
• •No skin tone variants. No ZWJ sequences. This is a single codepoint emoji, so it's reliable across all platforms without variation selector complications.

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