Pinched Fingers Emoji
U+1F90C:pinched_fingers:Skin tonesAbout Pinched Fingers 🤌
Pinched Fingers () is part of the People & Body group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E13.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. 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 fingers, gesture, hand, and 10 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?
All five fingertips pinched together, pointing upward. In Italy, this is the "ma che vuoi?" gesture: "What do you want?" or "What are you even saying?" It's deployed in frustration, disbelief, and the particular Italian exasperation that has no English equivalent. In Israel, the exact same hand shape means "rega" (wait a minute, have patience). In the Arab world, it's "lahza" (wait) or the more ominous "halla bfarjeek" (I'll show you), depending entirely on whether the person making it is smiling or glaring. Arab Twitter immediately claimed it as "the Arab mom's favorite emoji."
But outside Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, 🤌 has been completely reinterpreted. English-speaking internet adopted it as a "chef's kiss" for anything perfect: food, outfits, comebacks, plot twists. K-pop fans, particularly BTS's ARMY, used it as a stand-in for the Korean finger heart before 🫰 arrived in Unicode 14.0. An academic study from Graz University of Technology analyzed its usage across six languages on Twitter and found 24 distinct interpretations. Sentiment ranged from very positive in Japanese to quite negative in Italian and Spanish. One gesture, one emoji, at least two dozen meanings.
On Instagram and TikTok, 🤌 is the food emoji. A plate of cacio e pepe, a perfectly seared steak, a homemade sourdough loaf: 🤌. It functions as shorthand for "perfetto" in food contexts, even when the person posting has never been to Italy. The #ItalianHandsChallenge on TikTok cemented this association, and cooking creators use it as a stamp of approval in nearly every cuisine, not just Italian.
In texting, it's more versatile. "That comeback was 🤌" means flawless. "His excuse was 🤌" means absurdly perfect (sarcastically). The gesture carries an inherent theatricality that translates well to digital communication, because it implies the sender is physically gesturing at their phone. It says: this thing made me react with my whole body.
At work, 🤌 is riskier than 👍 or 👌 because it reads as informal and expressive. It works in creative teams and casual Slack channels. It does not work in a quarterly earnings summary. The emoji carries too much personality for contexts that demand neutrality.
One unexpected adoption pattern: researchers at Graz University found that hand-based emoji usage increased 24% relative to face emoji after March 2020, post-pandemic. People texting more meant people gesturing digitally more. 🤌 arrived at exactly the right moment.
It depends on who's using it. In English-speaking internet culture, it typically means "chef's kiss" or "perfection." In Italy, the gesture means "ma che vuoi?" (what do you want? / what are you saying?) and expresses frustration or disbelief. In Israel, it means "rega" (wait a minute). In the Arab world, it means "wait" or, with a threatening look, "just you wait." Researchers at Graz University found 24 distinct interpretations across 6 languages.
Yes, partially. The emoji was directly inspired by the Italian "che vuoi?" gesture, and its Unicode proposal was co-authored by Italian media entrepreneur Adriano Farano. But the gesture also exists independently in Israeli, Arab, and Mediterranean cultures with different meanings. The internet has largely adopted it as a "chef's kiss" emoji regardless of its Italian origins.
"Ma che vuoi?" (sometimes written "ma che vuò?") literally translates to "but what do you want?" It's the Italian name for the gesture that 🤌 represents: all fingertips pinched together, hand moving up and down, expressing disbelief, frustration, or "what are you even saying?" The gesture is also called "mano a borsa" (purse hand) because the fingers form a little bag shape.
How 🤌 is actually used outside Italy
What it means from...
From a crush, 🤌 on something you posted (a selfie, a meal, an outfit) is a strong compliment. It's saying "this is perfect" with theatrical flair. More expressive than 👌, more specific than 🔥. If they're using it on your appearance, they're interested.
Between partners, it's often playful. Reacting to your cooking with 🤌 is a running bit in many relationships. It can also be the frustrated Italian gesture: "Ma che vuoi?" when you're arguing about whose turn it is to do the dishes. Context and tone make the difference.
Among friends, 🤌 is the universal seal of approval. A good meme: 🤌. A perfect comeback in the group chat: 🤌. It's also used sarcastically for things that are perfectly terrible. "His apology text was 🤌" can mean flawlessly bad.
In Italian and Middle Eastern families, this emoji carries its literal cultural weight. From an Italian nonna, it means exactly what the gesture means: "What are you saying?" From an Arab mom, it might mean "just you wait." In non-Mediterranean families, it's typically the food/chef's kiss usage.
At work, 🤌 signals someone approves with enthusiasm but wants to keep it informal. "The new design is 🤌" is a compliment. It works in creative teams and casual channels. Too expressive for formal communication or executive-level threads.
From a stranger, it almost always means "chef's kiss" or approval. The Italian frustration meaning requires relationship context that strangers don't have. On a food post or tweet, it's straightforward praise.
Flirty or friendly?
🤌 leans friendly in most contexts. It becomes flirty when applied directly to someone's appearance ("You in that outfit 🤌") rather than to a thing ("That sunset 🤌"). The theatrical energy of the gesture adds warmth but not necessarily romance. It's more "I appreciate this with my whole Italian soul" than "I'm hitting on you."
- •Flirty: applied to selfies, outfit photos, or physical appearance
- •Friendly: applied to food, memes, comebacks, or shared experiences
- •Sarcastic: applied to something obviously terrible ("His parking job 🤌")
- •Cultural: used in conversation with actual Italian/Israeli/Arab context
On food or meme reactions, it means he thinks something is perfect. On your selfie or appearance, it's a theatrical compliment with flirty energy ("you look amazing" expressed with his whole body). In actual Italian/Mediterranean context, it might mean frustration. Context tells you which.
Same range of meanings: approval ("chef's kiss"), admiration for something specific, or playful exasperation. When sent about food, outfits, or shared experiences, it's pure enthusiasm. The emoji carries enough personality that using it signals the sender is expressive and playful by nature.
Not inherently. It becomes flirty when applied directly to a person's appearance ("You in that dress 🤌"). When applied to food, memes, or situations, it's friendly approval. The theatrical energy of the gesture adds warmth, but it's more "I appreciate this dramatically" than "I'm attracted to you."
Emoji combos
Origin story
The gesture itself is ancient. Italian hand gestures evolved during centuries of foreign occupation after the fall of the Roman Empire. Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Normans, French, Spaniards, and Austrians all controlled parts of the peninsula at different times, and none shared a common language. Italians developed an elaborate system of hand gestures to communicate across language barriers, particularly in the crowded, noisy streets of Naples and Southern Italy. The "che vuoi?" gesture, where all fingertips pinch together to form an upward cone, became one of the most recognizable: it means the speaker is grasping at meaning and failing, a physical metaphor for "I'm trying to understand what you're saying but I can't."
The emoji exists because of limoncello. In 2019, at a journalism conference, Jennifer 8. Lee (vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee and co-founder of Emojination) was talking with her friend Adriano Farano, an Italian media entrepreneur. Farano was deep in a conversation about limoncello and kept pinching his fingers together and moving his hand up and down. Lee asked what the gesture meant. "Ma che vuoi?" Farano explained: "What do you want?" Lee immediately saw an emoji.
Farano, Lee, and Oakland-based filmmaker Theo Schear (who had previously created the juice box emoji) wrote a 14-page proposal (L2/19-159) and submitted it to the Unicode Consortium in April 2019. The proposal argued the gesture was globally recognized, had clear meaning, and filled a gap in the emoji keyboard for hand gestures expressing disagreement or emphasis. The Unicode Technical Committee approved it, and it shipped as part of Unicode 13.0 in early 2020.
Farano later told OneZero: "For a long time, there wasn't an emoji inspired by this entertaining feature of my people." He saw the approval as "a way to join the global community of people in their sharing of a wide variety of states of mind and feelings that mirror as many cultural traits and traditions."
Approved in Unicode 13.0 (2020) as PINCHED FINGERS. Added to Emoji 13.0 in 2020. Supports skin tone modifiers ( through ). The original proposal (L2/19-159) was a 14-page document titled '"What do you want?" Pinched Fingers Emoji Proposal,' submitted in April 2019 by Adriano Farano, Jennifer 8. Lee, and Theo Schear through Emojination. The Unicode Technical Committee approved it later that year.
Design history
- 2019Adriano Farano, Jennifer 8. Lee, and Theo Schear submit 14-page proposal (L2/19-159) to Unicode Consortium↗
- 2020Approved in Unicode 13.0. Emojipedia announcement gets 43,000 likes and 11,000 retweets in under 24 hours↗
- 2020Apple and Samsung ship 🤌 in November 2020 with iOS 14.2 and One UI 2.5↗
- 2021Academic study at Graz University of Technology identifies 24 distinct interpretations across 6 languages↗
Around the world
Few emojis mean this many different things in this many specific places.
In Italy, it's "ma che vuoi?" (what do you want?). It expresses frustration, disbelief, disagreement, or the general sense that someone is talking nonsense. The gesture is produced by bringing all fingertips together to form an upward-pointing cone, then moving the hand up and down. It's especially common in Southern Italy, where gesture culture runs deepest, though it's used nationwide. In Italian, the hand shape is also called "mano a borsa" (purse hand) because the fingers form a little bag.
In Israel, the identical gesture means "rega" (wait a second, hold on, be patient). Haaretz reported Israelis immediately claimed the emoji as their own when it was announced. One Israeli businesswoman used the gesture at a meeting in Italy intending "please wait a moment" and caused a gasp of shock: in Italy, she'd just told the whole boardroom "what do you even want?"
In the Arab world, the gesture means "wait" (lahza) or, with a menacing look, "I'll show you" (halla bfarjeek). StepFeed reported that Arab Twitter erupted with "Arab mom's favorite emoji" memes. The difference between "wait" and "you're in trouble" is just the facial expression.
In K-pop fandoms, researchers found fans used 🤌 as a substitute for the Korean finger heart before 🫰 arrived in 2021. Former Girls' Generation member Yuri uses 🤌 as a signature gesture representing a dumpling. Her fans turned this into "I mandu you" (mandu = Korean for dumpling), their own way of saying "I love you."
Not everyone is happy about the reinterpretation. Gianluca Bellan, an Italian tech journalist at The Next Web, was blunt: the emoji "should only be used in disagreement" and non-Italians using it for food appreciation is "just plain wrong. And stupid." Italian TikTok creators have campaigned to get people to stop using 🤌 as "chef's kiss" and use it for its actual Italian meaning. They're fighting a losing battle.
In English-speaking internet culture, it has been almost entirely divorced from its original Italian meaning and repackaged as "chef's kiss" or "perfection." Most people using 🤌 on food posts have no idea it originally means "what are you even talking about?"
Dramatically different. Italy: "what do you want?" (frustration). Israel: "wait a minute" (patience). Arab world: "wait" or "you're in trouble" (depends on the face). K-pop fans: finger heart substitute. English-speaking internet: "chef's kiss" or "perfection." One Israeli businesswoman used it in an Italian boardroom meaning "please wait" and caused a gasp because in Italy, it's confrontational.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy was occupied by Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Normans, French, Spaniards, and Austrians. None shared a common language. Italians developed hand gestures to communicate across these language barriers, especially in the crowded streets of Naples and Southern Italy. The tradition stuck for over a thousand years and became a defining feature of Italian communication.
Popularity ranking
Search interest
Who uses it?
Often confused with
👌 is thumb-and-index-finger forming a circle (the OK sign). 🤌 is all five fingertips pinched together into a cone. Both are associated with Italian communication, but they're different physical shapes with different meanings. 👌 means "perfect" or "okay" almost everywhere. 🤌 means "what do you want?" in Italy, "wait" in Israel, or "chef's kiss" on the English-speaking internet. If you want simple approval, use 👌. If you want theatrical, expressive, gesture-with-your-whole-body approval, use 🤌.
👌 is thumb-and-index-finger forming a circle (the OK sign). 🤌 is all five fingertips pinched together into a cone. Both are associated with Italian communication, but they're different physical shapes with different meanings. 👌 means "perfect" or "okay" almost everywhere. 🤌 means "what do you want?" in Italy, "wait" in Israel, or "chef's kiss" on the English-speaking internet. If you want simple approval, use 👌. If you want theatrical, expressive, gesture-with-your-whole-body approval, use 🤌.
🤏 (Pinching Hand) shows thumb and index finger close together, meaning "a little bit" or "small." 🤌 shows all five fingers pinched to a point, meaning "what?" / "perfection" / "wait." They look similar at small sizes but carry completely different meanings. 🤏 is about size. 🤌 is about emphasis.
🤏 (Pinching Hand) shows thumb and index finger close together, meaning "a little bit" or "small." 🤌 shows all five fingers pinched to a point, meaning "what?" / "perfection" / "wait." They look similar at small sizes but carry completely different meanings. 🤏 is about size. 🤌 is about emphasis.
Different hand shapes, different origins. 👌 is thumb-and-index-finger forming a circle (the OK sign), meaning "okay" or "perfect" almost universally. 🤌 is all five fingertips pinched together into a cone. 👌 is general approval. 🤌 is theatrical, expressive, and culturally loaded. If you want simple confirmation, use 👌. If you want dramatic Italian-energy approval, use 🤌.
🤏 (Pinching Hand) means "a little bit" or "small," with thumb and index finger close together, measuring something tiny. 🤌 (Pinched Fingers) means "what?" / "perfection" / "wait," with all five fingers pinched to a point. They look similar at small sizes but have completely different meanings. Confusing them in a flirty context could be awkward.
Do's and don'ts
- ✗Be cautious using it with Italians who might read it as confrontational ("what do you want?")
- ✗Avoid using it in formal work contexts where the theatricality might feel out of place
- ✗Don't assume everyone reads it as "chef's kiss." Israelis read "wait," Arabs read "hold on" or worse
- ✗Don't overuse it. The gesture is theatrical by nature, and overuse deflates the drama
In casual Slack channels and creative teams, absolutely. It's a fun way to compliment work: "The new design is 🤌." In formal emails, exec updates, or client-facing communication, it's too theatrical. The emoji carries so much personality that it sets an informal tone by default.
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Fun facts
- •Italian hand gestures evolved during centuries of foreign occupation. After the Roman Empire fell, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Normans, French, Spaniards, and Austrians all occupied parts of the Italian peninsula. None spoke a common language. Italians developed elaborate hand gestures to communicate across these language barriers, and the tradition stuck for over a thousand years.
- •When Emojipedia tweeted the 2020 emoji announcement, the pinched fingers emoji dominated the conversation. The post got 43,000 likes and 11,000 retweets in under 24 hours. One viral reply: "Don't let Lady Gaga update her phone."
- •David Garcia's team at Graz University found that hand-based emoji usage increased 24% relative to face emoji after March 2020. The pandemic made people text more, and texting more meant gesturing digitally more. 🤌 arrived at exactly the right moment.
- •The co-author of the 🤌 proposal, Theo Schear, also created the juice box emoji. From juice boxes to Italian hand gestures: a range.
- •The gesture is called "mano a borsa" (purse hand) in Italian because the pinched fingers form a little bag shape. In the original Unicode proposal, it was also called a "finger purse."
- •Comedian Jaboukie Young-White's tweet "Italians we won" got over 755,000 likes in under 24 hours, making it one of the most-engaged reactions to any emoji announcement in Unicode history. New Jersey's official state account simply replied "endorsed."
- •Italy has approximately 250 distinct hand gestures in its nonverbal vocabulary. The Express Tribune reported that Italians use gestures roughly 250 times a day.
- •The Graz University study found 🤌 being used in cryptocurrency discussions to mean holding an investment for future profits. Researcher David Garcia said this was the finding that surprised him most.
Common misinterpretations
- •The biggest risk: sending 🤌 to an Italian person meaning "chef's kiss" while they read "what do you want?" or "what are you even saying?" In Italy, this is not a compliment gesture. It's an exasperation gesture. Context and your relationship with the person determine whether this is a problem.
- •In Israel, 🤌 means "wait" or "be patient." Sending it to an Israeli friend after they share exciting news could read as "hold on, calm down" rather than the intended "that's perfect."
- •Some people confuse 🤌 with 🤏 (Pinching Hand, meaning "a little bit" or "small"). At small emoji sizes, they can look similar. Sending the wrong one in a flirty context could be... unfortunate.
In pop culture
- •Dave Gahan in a leisure suit near the end of Depeche Mode's "It's No Good" music video (1997), making the pinched fingers gesture while playing a washed-up lounge singer. The video was directed by Anton Corbijn, and Gahan's theatricality with the gesture captures exactly the expressive energy 🤌 channels in digital form.
- •The Spider-Man pointing meme got a 🤌 remix when the emoji launched, with people replacing the pointing gesture with pinched fingers. The meme template spread across Twitter and Reddit during the January 2020 announcement wave.
- •Italian-American characters in film and television, from The Sopranos to stereotypical pizza chefs, have made the pinched fingers gesture iconic. YouTube creators Vincenzo's Plate and Lionfield both made viral videos explaining Italian hand gestures, with the 🤌 pinch prominently featured.
Trivia
For developers
- •Codepoint: . Part of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP), encoded as a 4-byte UTF-8 sequence ().
- •Skin tone support: append through for light to dark skin variants (e.g., for medium skin tone).
- •Common shortcodes: (GitHub, Slack), (some platforms). Note: is not the same as ( 🤏), which means "small" or "a little bit."
- •The emoji was introduced in Unicode 13.0 / Emoji 13.0 (2020). Check support if you need accurate grapheme cluster splitting for skin tone variants.
The proposal was submitted in April 2019 (L2/19-159) by Adriano Farano, Jennifer 8. Lee, and Theo Schear. It was approved as part of Unicode 13.0 in early 2020 and shipped on Apple and Samsung devices in November 2020. The gesture it represents has been used in Italy for over a thousand years.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
How do you use 🤌?
Select all that apply
- Pinched Fingers Emoji (emojipedia.org)
- Che vuoi? (Wikipedia) (wikipedia.org)
- Pinched Fingers Emoji Proposal (L2/19-159) (unicode.org)
- The Pinched Fingers Emoji's Creator Explains Its Meaning (OneZero) (medium.com)
- Who's using the pinched fingers emoji? Academics are on the case (Inverse) (inverse.com)
- Pinched Fingers Emoji: Twitter Reacts (Newsweek) (newsweek.com)
- World rejoices as 'rega' emoji is released (Jerusalem Post) (jpost.com)
- Israelis can finally use an emoji to tell each other to pipe down (Times of Israel) (timesofisrael.com)
- Italian or Arab? Who cares (StepFeed) (stepfeed.com)
- New emoji is Israel's way of saying 'wait a minute' (AZ Jewish Post) (azjewishpost.com)
- Pinched Fingers Emoji (Know Your Meme) (knowyourmeme.com)
- Gesticulation in Italian (Wikipedia) (wikipedia.org)
- Finally there's an emoji for that Italian hand gesture (The Local Italy) (thelocal.it)
- Emoji Frequency (unicode.org)
- One of Israel's Favorite Hand Gestures Is Now an Emoji (Haaretz) (haaretz.com)
- We asked an actual Italian about the new emoji (TNW) (thenextweb.com)
- How Italians Do Things (Know Your Meme) (knowyourmeme.com)
- What the new pinch emoji means around the world (Express Tribune) (tribune.com.pk)
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