Person Kneeling Emoji
U+1F9CE:kneeling_person:Skin tonesGender variantsAbout Person Kneeling π§
Person Kneeling () is part of the People & Body group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E12.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. On Discord it's . Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode. Pick a skin tone above to customize it.
Often associated with kneel, kneeling, knees, and 1 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
π§ is a kneeling figure, one of the most cultural-weight-heavy emojis in Unicode. The same posture can mean a marriage proposal, a prayer, a protest, a plea for mercy, a yoga transition, a begging joke, or a sexual euphemism, depending on who's sending it and where. The pose is too loaded to be neutral. That ambiguity is not a bug, it's the whole reason the proposal passed and also the reason the rendering debate never fully settled.
The emoji arrived in Unicode 12.0 in March 2019 via proposal L2/18-091, the same Emojination document that brought us π§ person-standing. Jennifer 8. Lee and Alex Marx filed the proposal. Graphic designer Ji Lee (no relation) drew the reference art, inspired directly by Colin Kaepernick. Ji Lee had been waiting for an emoji that could carry Kaepernick's 2016 protest, and when Unicode didn't have one, he designed it himself and offered it to Emojination.
And then the rendering split. Jennifer Daniel's team at Google shipped the figure on one knee, matching the proposal art and the Kaepernick posture. Every other major vendor, including Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter, rendered it on two knees. The text of the Unicode proposal had mentioned prayer and proposals alongside protest, and without an explicit "one knee only" clause, vendors defaulted to the traditional prayer posture. The protest emoji became, in Ji Lee's own words, something closer to "kneeling as a custom or cultural position."
Three different audiences use π§ three different ways. Activists and protest-adjacent posts use it alongside β and π€ for solidarity. Usage spikes around George Floyd anniversaries and when kneeling protests resurface in sports. Gen Z uses it as dramatic begging: "π§ please watch this before I lose my mind" or "I'm on my knees asking you to try this coffee." Gen Z emoji guides describe the primary reading as "I'm getting down on my knees begging." Stan accounts and meme culture use it sexually, particularly in celebrity contexts ("π§ for" a given star), which leaned on the two-knee rendering that Inside Hook memorably dubbed "the kneeling-in-protest emoji that turned into the blowjob emoji."
The π§π proposal combo is the cleanest, most unambiguous usage. It shows up in engagement announcements across all platforms and all demographics. Prayer usage, π§π, is strong on Facebook and WhatsApp, particularly in Christian and Muslim communities, and in cultures where prostration is part of worship.
The two-knees-vs-one-knee render matters more than most platform differences. Sending π§ from an iPhone reads different from sending it from a Pixel. On Android the protest reading is immediate. On iOS you get a more neutral supplication. That split means the exact same caption "π§ for the movement" can read activist or awkward depending on which OS the recipient uses.
A person kneeling. The emoji carries an unusually wide semantic range: marriage proposals, prayer, protest, begging, apology, submission. Gen Z most often reads it as dramatic begging, while older generations read it as prayer or proposal.
Universal marriage proposal. It works across languages, platforms, and generations. One of the few π§ uses that's completely unambiguous.
Deep prayer. Used sincerely in religious contexts (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism) and humorously in Gen Z contexts ("π§π please let the WiFi work").
The Person Posture Family
What it means from...
Almost always a proposal or a dramatic romantic beat. π§π is unmistakable. Outside of proposals, partners use it for playful apology ("π§ I'm sorry I forgot the anniversary") or full-send affection.
Dropping π§ in a DM to someone you like is bold. It reads as a willing-to-look-foolish move. "π§ please go out with me" is half joke, half confession, and depending on delivery it reads adorable or unhinged.
Exaggerated begging for attention. "π§ please watch this show" or "π§ come to brunch." The physical extremity is the joke.
Use with caution. The political associations can land wrong in professional contexts. Low-stakes "π§ please approve the PR" is usually fine. Anything that could read as kneeling-before-a-boss should be avoided.
On public social media the meaning depends entirely on hashtags and context. In activism threads it reads solidarity, in stan threads it reads thirst, in meme threads it reads begging.
In religious families π§π is sincere prayer. In irreligious ones it's dramatic begging. The same emoji works in both because the base meaning is "I'm on my knees," and families fill in the rest.
What π§ is actually used for
Emoji combos
Origin story
The origin splits into two halves. The activist half is Colin Kaepernick. On August 14, 2016 Kaepernick first sat during the national anthem. On August 26, 2016 he sat again and the country noticed. Former Army Green Beret Nate Boyer reached out and suggested kneeling instead of sitting, a posture Boyer argued was more respectful. On September 1, 2016 Kaepernick took a knee for the first time, joined by teammate Eric Reid. The gesture spread to the NFL, the WNBA, high school teams, the English Premier League, and eventually the Olympics.
The emoji half is Ji Lee, a designer who runs the pleaseenjoy.com studio. Watching the kneeling protests go global in 2017 and 2018, Lee noticed there was no Unicode emoji for the gesture. He drafted reference images of a person on one knee and brought them to Jennifer 8. Lee and Alex Marx at Emojination. Their March 2018 proposal L2/18-091 bundled kneeling with standing and sitting into a "stillness and motion" expansion pitch. Unicode approved standing and kneeling. Sitting did not make it.
Then the rendering split. Jennifer Daniel's Google team shipped the emoji on one knee, matching the proposal art. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter all went with two knees. Ji Lee's retrospective quote, captured by Fast Company, was "the proposal was weak in making the emoji as a protest emoji rather than kneeling as a custom or cultural position." The text had mentioned prayer and proposals. Without an explicit one-knee clause, half the vendors defaulted to prayer. Jennifer Daniel defended the Google choice: "Kneeling on one knee is multi-purpose."
The two-knee versions picked up a separate, unintended cultural reading. Inside Hook's 2020 headline was blunt: "How the 'Kneeling in Protest' Emoji Turned Into the 'Blowjob' Emoji." The Mark Zuckerberg on his knees meme ran with it. Gen Z stan culture normalized the sexual reading in contexts where the protest meaning was never the point.
Approved in Unicode 12.0 on March 5, 2019 as U+1F9CE PERSON KNEELING. Proposed via L2/18-091 by Jennifer 8. Lee and Alex Marx of Emojination with reference art by Ji Lee. Gender variants π§ββοΈ and π§ββοΈ shipped alongside the base. Directional π§ββ‘οΈ added in Emoji 15.0 (2022). All five Fitzpatrick skin tone modifiers supported.
One knee vs two knees: vendor split
Design history
- 2016Colin Kaepernick first sits (Aug 14), then kneels (Sep 1) during the U.S. national anthem, sparking the Take A Knee protestβ
- 2018Ji Lee (@pleaseenjoy) drafts reference art for a kneeling-in-protest emoji
- 2018Emojination (Jennifer 8. Lee, Alex Marx) submits proposal L2/18-091 combining standing, kneeling, sitting figuresβ
- 2019Unicode 12.0 ratifies U+1F9CE PERSON KNEELING on March 5. Sitting is held backβ
- 2019Google ships one-knee version per Jennifer Daniel. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter all ship two-knee versions
- 2020Ji Lee publicly recaps the rendering mix-up in a June viral thread; Jennifer 8. Lee cross-posts from Emojinationβ
- 2020During BLM protests the one-knee version gets new visibility, two-knee version picks up the 'kneeling begging' meme reading
- 2022Emoji 15.0 adds π§ββ‘οΈ facing-right variant, standardizing direction across vendorsβ
- 2023Mark Zuckerberg on his knees meme consolidates the humorous usage of the two-knee renderβ
Around the world
United States
Most loaded usage on earth. After Kaepernick the posture cannot be politically neutral. Using π§ in an American public post invites immediate tribal interpretation. The one-knee Google render and two-knee Apple render send different signals.
United Kingdom
English Premier League players took a knee before every match from June 2020 through August 2022. Wikipedia's Taking the Knee article catalogs the year-by-year change in how teams participated. π§ is still read as protest solidarity more than religion.
Catholic and Orthodox Christian regions
Kneeling is prayer posture, specifically. π§π in Italy, Poland, Greece, and Latin America reads devotional without irony. The protest meaning is secondary here.
Muslim-majority countries
The prayer posture (sujud) involves kneeling and prostrating. π§ fits close enough to be used in religious contexts. In Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Gulf it's often used around prayer times or religious holidays.
Japan and Korea
Seiza, the formal kneeling sit on folded legs, is part of traditional etiquette. π§ is used literally for that context in older demographics. Gen Z in both countries has picked up the begging meme reading through English-language internet.
Latin America
Telenovela energy. π§ shows up in melodramatic romantic contexts, apologies, and proposals. The begging meme is strong in Spanish-language Twitter.
That was the original design intent. Ji Lee drew the reference art inspired by Colin Kaepernick. Emojination submitted the proposal in 2018. But the text of the proposal mentioned prayer and proposals alongside protest, and most vendors rendered it as prayer. The protest meaning survives on Google's Android version.
The two-knee render on Apple and most other vendors reads like the sexual kneeling pose from pop culture and porn, and Gen Z leaned into that. "π§ for [celebrity]" became stan-culture shorthand. The sexual meaning is real even though it was never the design intent.
Gender variants
π§ββοΈ and π§ββοΈ split cleanly by use. The woman-kneeling variant dominates prayer, yoga, and garden-work posts. The man-kneeling variant dominates sports-protest and Kaepernick-referencing content, plus Tim-Tebow-style post-touchdown imagery. The neutral base is the emoji used for the begging meme, where the body's gender is beside the point.
π§ vs π§ vs πΆ vs π: Google Trends, 2020β2026
Often confused with
Person Bowing. East Asian bow of respect or apology, folded over from the waist. π§ is kneeling, a lower and more committal posture. The two are not interchangeable in Japanese or Korean texting.
Person Bowing. East Asian bow of respect or apology, folded over from the waist. π§ is kneeling, a lower and more committal posture. The two are not interchangeable in Japanese or Korean texting.
Person Standing. The companion from the same Unicode proposal. π§ is neutral idleness, π§ is loaded gesture. Together they cover the "stillness" half of the Emojination stillness-and-motion expansion.
Person Standing. The companion from the same Unicode proposal. π§ is neutral idleness, π§ is loaded gesture. Together they cover the "stillness" half of the Emojination stillness-and-motion expansion.
Palms Up Together. Often used for prayer or asking. Can substitute for π§π in shorter messages, but carries no posture commitment.
Palms Up Together. Often used for prayer or asking. Can substitute for π§π in shorter messages, but carries no posture commitment.
Place of Worship. The icon of a praying/kneeling figure inside a building, which is different from π§ on its own. π is the location, π§ is the person.
Place of Worship. The icon of a praying/kneeling figure inside a building, which is different from π§ on its own. π is the location, π§ is the person.
Person Kneeling Facing Right. Emoji 15.0 directional variant, introduced to fix the inconsistent facing direction vendors had shipped since 2019.
Person Kneeling Facing Right. Emoji 15.0 directional variant, introduced to fix the inconsistent facing direction vendors had shipped since 2019.
Do's and don'ts
- βDon't use π§ in professional contexts without thinking about political read
- βAvoid it in condolence messages, the posture can feel performative
- βDon't assume the recipient sees the same render you do, the one-knee/two-knee split is real
- βSkip it in formal news communication, the sexual meme reading has bled into professional perception
Depends. Low-stakes begging ("π§ please approve this PR") lands fine in casual team chats. Anything with political or religious connotations belongs outside work channels. The sexual meme reading has bled far enough into culture that some managers will find it inappropriate.
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Type it as text
Fun facts
- β’The Unicode proposal that birthed π§ was L2/18-091, submitted by Emojination's Jennifer 8. Lee and Alex Marx. The reference art was drawn by a different designer, Ji Lee of @pleaseenjoy. Two Lees, no relation.
- β’Jennifer Daniel, Google's creative director for emoji and former chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, personally greenlit Google's one-knee render. Her stated rationale: "kneeling on one knee is multi-purpose."
- β’Nate Boyer, a former Army Green Beret and NFL long snapper, is the reason Kaepernick kneeled instead of sitting. Boyer argued kneeling was more respectful to the anthem than sitting, a compromise that became the permanent posture.
- β’The medieval chivalric tradition of genuflection, where knights knelt before their liege lord, is the ancestor of both the marriage proposal and the Christian church kneeling posture. The same gesture, reassigned as the West secularized.
- β’In Japanese traditional etiquette, seiza (proper kneeling on folded legs) is considered the formal sit and is the default posture in tea ceremony. The π§ emoji is often used in Japanese texting to reference that context, without any activist overtone.
- β’The English Premier League players took a knee before every match from June 2020 to August 2022. Several teams stopped earlier over concerns that the gesture had become "performative."
- β’Ji Lee's original reference sheet for the emoji included three poses: a one-knee protest figure, a head-bowed prayer figure, and a hybrid. Unicode picked the one-knee version for the proposal document, but most vendors drew something closer to the prayer posture.
- β’Emoji 15.0's directional variants included π§ββ‘οΈ (right-facing) and the reverse. Apple ships the right-facing sequence as a separate rendering, which means iOS users now have three different π§ variants installed.
Common misinterpretations
- β’The two-knee iOS render reads as sexual in a lot of Gen Z contexts even when senders mean prayer. Parents intending π§π as worship get raised eyebrows from teenagers.
- β’In professional contexts π§ in a message about "kneeling to the new CEO" has sometimes been received as unintentional sexual undertone, given the meme reading has become widespread.
- β’Recipients on Android see a one-knee protest render while senders on iOS see two knees. The same caption "π§ for the cause" lands as activism on one device and supplication on the other.
- β’Using π§ in dating app bios can backfire. Sender means "I'm willing to commit" via proposal-pose symbolism. Reader reads sexual subtext. Context collapses hard on dating apps.
In pop culture
- β’Colin Kaepernick's 2016 national anthem protest is the canonical cultural anchor for the emoji.
- β’Tim Tebow's post-touchdown kneel, aka "Tebowing," became a 2011 meme and 2012 cultural moment, years before the emoji existed.
- β’Game of Thrones' "bend the knee" catchphrase, delivered repeatedly by Daenerys Targaryen, gave π§ an aristocratic registration in fan usage across 2015 to 2019.
- β’The Mark Zuckerberg on his knees meme template, which pairs Zuck with π§ in submissive captions, dominated Gen Z X feeds in late 2023 and 2024.
- β’BeyoncΓ©'s 2016 Super Bowl halftime show dancers formed an X and took a knee as a tribute to the Black Panthers, directly preceding and thematically echoing Kaepernick's protest.
Trivia
For developers
- β’The base emoji π§ is U+1F9CE. Direction variants use ZWJ: π§ββ‘οΈ = U+1F9CE U+200D U+27A1 U+FE0F.
- β’Gender sequences follow the same pattern: π§ββοΈ = U+1F9CE U+200D U+2640 U+FE0F. Full gendered facing-right π§ββοΈββ‘οΈ is six codepoints.
- β’Rendering differences between one-knee (Google) and two-knee (Apple/Samsung/Microsoft) versions are vendor-level choices, not font-level. You cannot override this with CSS; you'd need a custom emoji font.
- β’If your app displays user-generated content with π§, be aware the visual interpretation of the exact same codepoint varies across recipient devices.
- β’The Fitzpatrick skin tone modifiers attach between π§ and any ZWJ sequence: π§πΏββοΈ renders a dark-skin-tone woman kneeling.
- β’When comparing rendering across vendors programmatically, Twemoji (the open-source set used by X and Discord) defaults to two knees and is a reliable baseline for most fallback scenarios.
- β’The facing-right compound π§ββ‘οΈ adds 3 codepoints (ZWJ + right-arrow + VS16) to the base. Full woman-kneeling-facing-right π§ββοΈββ‘οΈ is six codepoints plus two zero-width joiners.
Google ships one knee (matching the Kaepernick protest pose). Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter ship two knees (closer to prayer). The Unicode proposal said "kneeling" without specifying, and vendors interpreted it differently.
Jennifer 8. Lee and Alex Marx of Emojination filed the formal Unicode proposal (L2/18-091) in March 2018. Designer Ji Lee of pleaseenjoy.com contributed the reference art. Three different people named Lee are involved in the story.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
What do you use π§ for most?
Select all that apply
- Person Kneeling Emoji (emojipedia.org)
- Unicode Proposal L2/18-091 (unicode.org)
- Ji Lee, Kneeling Emoji design notes (pleaseenjoy.com)
- Unicode got a proposal for a kneeling-in-protest emoji, Fast Company (fastcompany.com)
- How the Kneeling in Protest Emoji Became the Blowjob Emoji, Inside Hook (insidehook.com)
- Taking the Knee, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Colin Kaepernick, Britannica (britannica.com)
- US National Anthem Kneeling Protests, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Jennifer 8. Lee thread on kneeling emoji rendering (x.com)
- Mark Zuckerberg on His Knees, Know Your Meme (knowyourmeme.com)
- Genuflection, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Seiza, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
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