Hand With Fingers Splayed Emoji

An open hand with all five fingers spread apart, palm facing forward. It looks simple, but 🖐️ is one of the most culturally loaded gestures on the planet. In English-speaking countries, it's a greeting ("hey!"), a stop sign ("hold on"), a high five, or the number five. Perfectly safe.

In Greece, it's called the moutza, and it's one of the most offensive things you can do to someone. The gesture dates to the Byzantine Empire, when criminals were paraded through town on a donkey while bystanders smeared cinder (moútzos) on their faces with open palms. The smearing motion became the insult. Thrusting your open palm with spread fingers toward someone's face in Greece today still carries roughly the same weight as the middle finger in the US. Both hands doubles it.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the same five-finger open palm is the Hamsa (Arabic "khamsa," literally "five"), a centuries-old symbol believed to ward off the evil eye. You'll see it painted on trucks in Pakistan, dangling from taxi mirrors in Turkey, and hung above doorways from India to Morocco. Same shape, opposite energy: one culture's insult is another's protection.

Approved in Unicode 7.0 (2014) as RAISED HAND WITH FINGERS SPLAYED. The spread fingers distinguish it from ✋, which keeps fingers together and reads as more formal or commanding.

Greeting. "Hey 🖐️" is a casual hello. The spread fingers feel more relaxed than 👋 (which implies motion) or ✋ (which can feel abrupt). Think of it as the difference between someone waving from across a room and someone putting their hand up to stop you.

Stop/wait. "Hold on 🖐️" or "wait 🖐️" uses it as a visual brake. Less aggressive than ✋ because the spread fingers soften the gesture, like the difference between a crossing guard's flat palm and a friend saying "give me a sec."

High five. "Great job! 🖐️" or the paired version 🖐️✋ works as a virtual celebration. The high five itself was invented on October 2, 1977 by Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke, who raised his hand over his head to congratulate Dusty Baker on his 30th home run. Baker, not knowing what to do, slapped it. The gesture spread worldwide.

Jazz hands. The double 🖐️🖐️ means excitement or showmanship. In 2018, the University of Manchester Students' Union passed a motion to replace clapping with "silent jazz hands" (BSL sign language applause) at events, to accommodate students with anxiety disorders and sensory sensitivity. Oxford followed in 2019. The story went viral and sparked a massive debate about accessibility vs. tradition.

Number five. Practical use: "I need 🖐️ minutes" or answering a "how many" question.

The story of 🖐️ starts long before smartphones. The open palm with spread fingers is one of humanity's oldest gestures, and its meaning has never been settled.

The Hamsa hand, depicting an open palm with five fingers, appears in archaeological artifacts dating back to ancient Mesopotamia. The word comes from Arabic "khamsa" (five). In Jewish tradition, it's the Hand of Miriam. In Islam, the Hand of Fatima. The gesture was believed to ward off the evil eye, and you'll still find Hamsa talismans dangling from rearview mirrors and doorways across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

But in ancient Greece, the same open palm became the moutza, one of the culture's most enduring insults. During the Byzantine Empire, convicted criminals were paraded through the streets riding backwards on donkeys while citizens scooped cinder (moútzos) from the ground and smeared it on their faces with open palms. The gesture outlived the empire by centuries. Today in Greece, thrusting your open palm toward someone is accompanied by "na!" (here!) or "par'ta!" (take these!) and carries roughly the force of an extended middle finger. Both hands, smacking one palm against the other's back for emphasis, makes it worse.

The digital version arrived through a 2011 Unicode proposal to encode Microsoft's Wingdings and Webdings font symbols. The hand-with-fingers-splayed glyph had existed in Wingdings since 1990, designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes for the Lucida Icons set. When Unicode 7.0 shipped in June 2014, it finally got a codepoint: U+1F590U+1F590.

Approved in Unicode 7.0 (2014) as U+1F590U+1F590 RAISED HAND WITH FINGERS SPLAYED. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. The name was later simplified to "Hand with Fingers Splayed" because "raised" was redundant. Skin tone variants added in Emoji 2.0 (2015) via the Fitzpatrick scale. Requires U+FE0FU+FE0F variation selector for emoji presentation on some platforms. The character originated from Microsoft's Wingdings font, where it existed as a symbol for years before being encoded into Unicode proper.

1. 1990Open hand glyph appears in Microsoft Wingdings font, designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes
2. 2011Unicode proposal L2/11-247 recommends encoding Wingdings symbols including the splayed hand↗
3. 2014Approved in Unicode 7.0 as U+1F590 RAISED HAND WITH FINGERS SPLAYED↗
4. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0. Apple adds it in iOS 9.1, Google in Android 6.0.1
5. 2015Skin tone modifiers added in Emoji 2.0 via the Fitzpatrick scale

The open five-finger palm might be the single most geographically dangerous hand gesture.

Greece, Turkey, parts of the Balkans: The moutza is one of the most offensive gestures in the region. In Greece, even accidentally showing your open palm to someone (like while trying to signal "five" or "stop") can provoke a reaction. Tourist guides specifically warn about this. The insult dates to the Byzantine Empire and remains culturally loaded today.

Pakistan: According to Rest of World, sending the open hand in Pakistan can be interpreted as hurling curses at the recipient. The five-finger gesture carries specific negative connotations in South Asian contexts that Western users rarely anticipate.

Middle East & North Africa: The five-finger Hamsa is a protection symbol, not an insult. Showing your open hand in the context of warding off evil is positive. But the gesture's meaning shifts depending on whether you're presenting it to someone or displaying it as a talisman. Context is everything.

Japan: The five-spread-finger gesture can signify a coin and by extension wealth, making it culturally neutral to mildly positive in most contexts.

ASL / Deaf community: The open hand with five spread fingers is a fundamental handshape in American Sign Language, used in signs for "goodbye," "stop," and dozens of other words. The BSL equivalent became the basis for the "jazz hands" silent applause used at Manchester and Oxford universities.

• •The character originated in Microsoft's Wingdings font (1990), designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. It lived as an unencoded symbol for 24 years before getting its own Unicode codepoint in 2014.
• •There's a Unicode character called 🖑 REVERSED RAISED HAND WITH FINGERS SPLAYED (U+1F591U+1F591), showing the palm facing the viewer instead of outward. It exists in the standard but almost no platforms render it as an emoji.
• •The high five was invented in 1977 and the spread-finger version (this emoji) is closer to the original gesture than the together-finger ✋. Glenn Burke raised his hand with fingers naturally apart, not pressed together.
• •In Greek, the moutza is often accompanied by "na!" (here!) or "par'ta!" (take these!). Using both hands doubles the insult and is considered extremely aggressive.
• •The jazz hands gesture traces back to African dance traditions and became a Broadway staple through Bob Fosse's choreography in the 1970s. Dictionary.com defines it as "the extension of a performer's hands with palms toward the audience and fingers splayed." That's literally this emoji.

• •In Greece and Turkey, this gesture is the moutza, one of the most offensive hand signals in the culture. If someone from that region sends you 🖐️, they might be joking. Or they might not be.
• •Some people read 🖐️ as "talk to the hand" dismissal when it's meant as a friendly greeting. Adding 😊 after it clears up the ambiguity.
• •In group chats, a sudden 🖐️ can read as "wait, stop" when you actually just meant "hi." Context or a follow-up message helps.

• •Bob Fosse made the spread-finger jazz hand one of Broadway's most iconic moves. His choreography for Pippin (1972) opens with illuminated jazz hands in darkness, and the image is still synonymous with theatrical showmanship. "Jazz hands" entered casual vocabulary as shorthand for over-the-top excitement.
• •"Talk to the hand" was the defining dismissal gesture of the 1990s, first popularized on the Martin Lawrence TV show (1992-1997). The open palm shoved toward someone's face meant "I'm done listening." Both the Oxford English Dictionary and Green's Dictionary of Slang date the phrase to 1995. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered it in Terminator 3 (2003), and Austin Powers used it in 1999.
• •The high five was born on October 2, 1977 when Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke thrust his open hand over his head to celebrate Dusty Baker's 30th home run. Baker slapped it, and the gesture went viral before viral was a word. Burke, who was one of the first openly gay MLB players, was later traded amid rumors about his personal life. He died of AIDS in 1995 at 42. The gesture he invented is now performed billions of times a year.
• •The Hamsa hand, featuring five spread fingers, appears throughout Middle Eastern and North African art and architecture. It's one of the most popular tattoo designs globally, representing protection from the evil eye. In Jewish tradition it's the Hand of Miriam; in Islam, the Hand of Fatima.

• •🖐️ is U+1F590U+1F590 followed by U+FE0FU+FE0F (variation selector-16). Without the FE0FFE0F, some platforms render it as a text symbol rather than a colored emoji. Always include the variation selector in emoji strings.
• •Common shortcodes: :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed::raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed: (Slack, GitHub), :hand_splayed::hand_splayed: (Discord).
• •Skin tone variants use Fitzpatrick modifiers: 🖐🏻 (U+1F590 U+1F3FBU+1F590 U+1F3FB), 🖐🏼, 🖐🏽, 🖐🏾, 🖐🏿. The base plus modifier is a single grapheme cluster.
• •In regex, match with /\u{1F590}\u{FE0F}?/u/\u{1F590}\u{FE0F}?/u to catch both with and without the variation selector.

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