Pouring Liquid Emoji

A glass tipped on its side, liquid cascading out. The image is simple. The meanings it carries are 5,000 years old.

🫗 is three emoji in one. It's "pour one out for the homies," the hip-hop gesture of tipping a drink onto the ground to honor someone who's passed. It's "spill the tea," the drag culture expression for sharing gossip that Merriam-Webster traces to Lady Chablis in 1994. And it's the literal act of pouring someone a drink, an offering, a generous act.

The emoji was proposed to Unicode by O'Plérou Grebet, an Ivorian graphic designer who created 365+ African culture emojis as his "Zouzoukwa" project, and Jennifer Daniel, chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee. Their proposal explicitly references libation as a ritual that "has been incorporated around the world, including China, India, Cuba, Russia, indigenous tribes in South America, and countless African cultures." The keywords they listed: libation, pour, spill, empty, sacrifice, overflow, drink, gift, glass. That's a lot of weight for one tilted cup.

In practice, 🫗 splits roughly into four registers.

The memorial register: "Pour one out" for someone or something that's gone. This ranges from dead serious (honoring a lost friend) to aggressively ironic (mourning a discontinued menu item). The hip-hop lineage runs from Ice Cube in Boyz n the Hood (1991) through 2Pac's "Pour Out a Little Liquor" (1994) to the present day.

The gossip register: Combined with ☕ or 🍵, it means "spill the tea" or "the tea is being served." This is the Kermit sipping tea energy, the moment gossip hits the group chat and everyone has opinions.

The party register: Just pouring drinks. Cocktail hour, wine night, pregaming, bartender TikTok. Nothing symbolic, just someone filling a glass.

The emotional register: "Pouring my heart out," venting, unburdening yourself. The liquid is feelings, not a beverage. This is the most metaphorical use and the one that shows up most in therapy memes and mental health spaces.

Humans have been pouring liquid onto the ground as a ritual act for at least 5,000 years. The earliest documented libations come from Ancient Egypt, where water (not wine, because water was the real sacrifice in a desert climate) was poured to sustain the ka, the vital essence that survives after death. The practice was so central to Egyptian religious life that it appears in tomb paintings, temple reliefs, and funerary equipment from the Early Dynastic period onward.

The Greeks formalized two types. Spondai were measured pours for the Olympian gods, typically wine, where you'd drink some yourself. Choai were complete pourings where every drop went to underworld deities or the dead. No sipping. You gave it all.

The Romans took it further. They built actual "libation tubes" into graves, hollow pipes that connected the surface to the burial below, so relatives could pour wine directly onto their ancestors. The liquid traveled through the tube to the bones or ashes. The Romans believed the dead could consume it.

In West, Central, and Southern African traditions, pouring libation remains a living practice. Elders pour palm wine, water, or traditional drinks while calling ancestors by name to participate in community events, weddings, and festivals. It crossed the Atlantic through the Middle Passage and survives in African-American traditions including Kwanzaa.

From there to hip-hop: In John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood (1991), Doughboy (Ice Cube) pours malt liquor on the curb after his brother's murder. The gesture already existed in Black communities, but Singleton put it on screen for 57 million viewers. 2Pac's "Pour Out a Little Liquor" (1994) cemented it in music. By the 2000s, "pour one out for the homies" was universal slang.

The emoji itself was proposed in November 2019 by O'Plérou Grebet and Jennifer Daniel (document L2/20-065). Grebet, a 22-year-old Ivorian designer, had created 365 African culture emojis called "Zouzoukwa" (meaning "picture" in Bété). Daniel, as chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, recognized the pour emoji could carry both African libation traditions and the broader internet meanings. Unicode 14.0 approved it in September 2021.

1. -3000Earliest documented libations in Ancient Egypt: water poured to sustain the ka (vital essence) of the dead↗
2. -800Ancient Greeks formalize spondai (shared pour for Olympians) and choai (complete pour for the dead)
3. 100Romans build libation tubes into graves to pipe liquid directly to buried ancestors↗
4. 1991Boyz n the Hood: Doughboy pours malt liquor on the curb. 'Pour one out' enters mainstream pop culture↗
5. 1994Lady Chablis uses 'T' (truth/gossip) in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Origin of 'spill the tea'↗
6. 2014Kermit sipping tea 'But That's None of My Business' meme goes viral, connecting tea with gossip permanently↗
7. 2018O'Plérou Grebet launches Zouzoukwa: 365 African culture emojis published on Instagram↗
8. 2019Grebet and Jennifer Daniel submit 'Pour' emoji proposal (L2/20-065) to Unicode↗
9. 2021Unicode 14.0 approves 🫗 Pouring Liquid with keywords: libation, pour, spill, sacrifice, overflow, drink, gift↗

The pouring gesture means different things in different rooms.

In the US, "pour one out" is primarily associated with hip-hop culture and honoring the dead, though it's gone mainstream enough that people use it to mourn cancelled TV shows. In Black American communities, the gesture connects to African libation traditions that survived the Middle Passage and are still practiced at Kwanzaa celebrations.

In Ghana, Nigeria, and across West Africa, pouring libation is a living spiritual practice, not a metaphor. An elder pours for ancestors at weddings, naming ceremonies, and community gatherings. Using 🫗 casually might land differently for someone from a tradition where this act is sacred.

In Japan, pouring someone else's drink (and not your own) is a core social courtesy. At any izakaya, watch how people refill each other's glasses. Pouring for yourself signals you're uncomfortable or that nobody cares about you. The emoji fits this vibe: generosity, hospitality.

In India, pouring water or ghee is central to Hindu puja rituals. The act of abhisheka (ritual bathing of a deity with milk, water, honey, or yogurt) involves continuous pouring and is considered an act of devotion.

The "spill the tea" register is primarily English-speaking internet culture, carried globally by RuPaul's Drag Race (broadcast in 170+ countries) and the Kermit meme.

• •The earliest documented libations are from Ancient Egypt, roughly 3000 BCE. They used water, not wine, because in a desert climate, water was the real sacrifice. To pour it out was to give up something you could not replace.
• •The Greeks had two distinct types of pour: spondai (you share the drink with the gods, sipping some yourself) and choai (every drop goes to the dead). No cheating on a choai.
• •O'Plérou Grebet was 22 when he and Jennifer Daniel submitted the pour emoji proposal. He'd already created 365 African emojis in a year, one per day, published on Instagram.
• •The Kermit sipping tea meme (June 2014) gained 130,000 Instagram followers in four days and was used 19,000 times with the #NoneOfMyBusiness hashtag within the same period. It permanently linked tea with gossip in English-speaking internet culture.
• •"Spill the tea" traces to Lady Chablis, a drag performer in Savannah, who used "T" (short for truth) in John Berendt's 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. "T" became "tea," and pouring it became gossip.
• •The Unicode proposal's official keywords are: libation, pour, spill, empty, sacrifice, overflow, drink, gift, glass. That's nine meanings packed into one tilted cup.

• •The ironic "pour one out" register can misfire badly. If someone shares real grief and you respond with 🫗 meaning "RIP lol," you've used the ironic register when they needed the sincere one. Read the room before pouring.
• •Some people read 🫗 as "wasting" or "spilling" in a negative sense (carelessness, loss of control). If you're texting "pouring one out" and they read "you spilled your drink," you're having two different conversations.
• •For people from West African, Hindu, or other libation-practicing traditions, the pouring gesture is spiritually significant. Using it as a throwaway gossip shorthand can feel like watching someone use a prayer emoji to mean "high five."

• •Ice Cube as Doughboy in Boyz n the Hood (1991) pours malt liquor on the curb in the film's devastating final scene. The movie grossed $57 million and the gesture became shorthand for honoring the dead in mainstream American culture. John Singleton was 23 when he directed it.
• •2Pac's "Pour Out a Little Liquor" (1994) from the Above the Rim soundtrack cemented the libation gesture in hip-hop. The song, produced by Johnny "J," sampled The O'Jays and Soul II Soul. It was released the same year as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which gave us "spill the tea." 1994 was a big year for pouring liquid.
• •Lady Chablis, a drag performer in Savannah, used "T" (truth) in John Berendt's 1994 book. "My T. My thing, my business, what's goin' on in my life." That "T" became "tea," which became "spill the tea," which became half the reason this emoji exists.
• •The Kermit sipping tea meme (June 2014) used a Lipton tea commercial still to create the passive-aggressive gossip format: "[observation about someone's behavior]... but that's none of my business." It gained 130,000 Instagram followers in four days and welded tea to gossip permanently.
• •RuPaul's Drag Race, broadcast in 170+ countries since 2009, carried drag slang ("the tea," "spill," "read") into global mainstream. When contestants say "the tea is scalding" or "spill the tea, sis," they're using language from the same Black drag ballroom culture that Lady Chablis represented.
• •O'Plérou Grebet's Zouzoukwa project (2018) created 365 African culture emojis in one year: yam, attieke, African cloth patterns, traditional instruments. NPR covered it, Jennifer Daniel noticed, and they co-authored the pour emoji proposal. Without Zouzoukwa, the pouring liquid emoji might not exist.
• •Kwanzaa's Tambiko ritual involves pouring libation (typically water or juice) from a unity cup while calling on ancestors. The practice connects directly to the West African libation traditions that O'Plérou Grebet's emoji proposal explicitly referenced.

• •The codepoint is U+1FAD7U+1FAD7. In JavaScript: '\u{1FAD7}''\u{1FAD7}'. Part of Unicode 14.0 / Emoji 14.0 (September 2021).
• •Platform support is strong: available on Apple iOS 15.4+, Google Android 12L+, Samsung One UI 4.0+, Microsoft Windows 11+, and all modern browser engines.
• •The CLDR short name is "pouring liquid" but the proposal title was simply "Pour." The keywords in the spec include libationlibation, pourpour, spillspill, emptyempty, sacrificesacrifice, overflowoverflow, drinkdrink, giftgift, glassglass.
• •In Slack, the custom emoji :pour_one_out::pour_one_out: predates the official Unicode version. Some workspaces may have both. The official shortcode is :pouring_liquid::pouring_liquid: where supported.

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