Raised Back Of Hand Emoji

A raised hand showing the back side, the one with fingernails and knuckles. That distinction from ✋ (which shows the palm) changes the entire tone. An open palm says "stop" with authority. The back of the hand says "talk to the hand" with attitude.

🤚 sits in an unusual space among hand emojis. It's the only one that shows this specific angle, and that angle carries decades of pop culture baggage. The "talk to the hand" gesture was popularized by Martin Lawrence's Fox sitcom Martin (1992-97) and became one of the defining dismissals of 1990s culture. Both the Oxford English Dictionary and Green's Dictionary of Slang date the phrase to 1995, when linguist Connie Eble recorded it in her collection of campus slang at the University of North Carolina.

But 🤚 isn't just dismissal. People also use it to raise their hand (volunteering, asking a question), signal "wait a second," or even wave. The back-of-hand angle makes it read as more casual and less commanding than ✋. It's the difference between a crossing guard and someone in a meeting who has a question.

There's a weirder layer underneath. Body language researcher Allan Pease demonstrated in his TEDx talk that palm-up gestures make an audience retain 40% more information and rate the speaker as friendly, while palm-down gestures get rated as "authoritative, pushy, telling me what to do." 🤚 doesn't fit either bucket cleanly. The back of the hand faces outward, so you're showing neither a submissive open palm nor a commanding downward press. You're showing knuckles. That's closer to a shield than a gesture, which is probably why it reads as "I'm blocking you out" regardless of whether you meant dismissal or a pause.

🤚 shows up in three main patterns.

First, the volunteer: "Who wants to go? 🤚" or "I'll do it 🤚" or reacting to a Slack message with 🤚 to claim a task. This is 🤚 at its most functional, basically raising your hand in class. Slack teams and Discord servers use it this way constantly.

Second, the dismissal: "I don't want to hear it 🤚" or "Nope 🤚" or the classic "talk to the hand 🤚." This one's been around since the 1990s and still works, even if the phrase itself sounds dated. The gesture hasn't aged the way the catchphrase did.

Third, the pause: "Hold on 🤚" or "Wait 🤚 let me finish." Softer than ✋, which reads as a full stop. 🤚 is more "give me a second" than "don't move."

The emoji doesn't carry strong generational coding. It doesn't show up on any of the "cringe millennial emoji" lists the way 😂 or 👍 do. It's too niche to have attracted that kind of scrutiny. Most people who see it just read it as a raised hand and move on.

🤚 arrived in Unicode 9.0 (June 2016) as part of a batch of 72 new emojis that included 🤳 (selfie), 🤞 (crossed fingers), 🤦 (facepalm), and 🤷 (shrug). That cohort was heavy on hand gestures, which makes sense: hands do most of the talking in emoji, and the pre-2016 keyboard was missing common gestures that people actually use.

Before 🤚, the emoji set had ✋ (palm facing forward) and 🖐️ (splayed fingers, also palm forward). But there was no way to show the back of your hand. If you've ever tried to signal "talk to the hand" with a palm-forward emoji, it reads wrong because the palm is the polite side. The dismissive energy comes from the knuckles.

The gesture 🤚 encodes has a rich cultural trail. In the US, it's inextricable from the 1990s catchphrase "talk to the hand, because the face ain't listening." The phrase was popularized by Martin Lawrence's sitcom Martin on Fox, which ran from 1992 to 1997. In 2022, Ebony credited the show with putting "talk to the hand," "you go girl," and "you so crazy" into the mainstream vocabulary. Martin's co-star Tisha Campbell recalled that when they started seeing people use the phrase on the street, her reaction was "Somebody's gonna get their hand cut off."

The phrase hit daytime TV hard. It became a staple of confrontational talk shows like Jerry Springer and Maury, where guests used the gesture to shut down arguments on camera. By the late 1990s it was everywhere, from school hallways to office arguments. The gesture persisted even after the catchphrase aged out, which is why 🤚 still reads as dismissive to anyone old enough to remember.

Approved in Unicode 9.0 (June 2016) as U+1F91AU+1F91A RAISED BACK OF HAND, part of Emoji 3.0. Added alongside 🤳 (selfie), 🤞 (crossed fingers), 🤦 (facepalm), and 🤷 (shrug). The 2016 batch was notable for hand gestures: Unicode recognized that the existing hand emoji set was missing common real-world gestures. 🤚 specifically fills the "back of hand" angle that ✋ and 🖐️ don't cover.

1. 2016Approved in Unicode 9.0 as part of Emoji 3.0 with 72 new emojis↗
2. 2016Apple ships first design in iOS 10.2↗
3. 2016Skin tone modifiers supported from day one (🤚🏻🤚🏼🤚🏽🤚🏾🤚🏿)

The back of the hand vs. palm distinction matters more than most people realize, and it changes meaning depending on where you are.

In Greece, showing someone your open palm with fingers spread (the moutza or mountza) is one of the most offensive gestures in the culture. It dates back to the Byzantine Empire, when criminals were paraded through town with cinder smeared on their faces, applied with an open palm. The gesture evolved into a serious insult. Greeks take care not to overextend their fingers even when signaling the number five. Using both hands doubles the offense. So in Greece, ✋ (palm showing) accidentally echoes a deep insult, while 🤚 (back of hand showing) is the safer option. The emoji set accidentally preserves a cultural distinction most users never think about.

In parts of the Middle East (Iraq, Pakistan) and Armenia, an abrupt palm thrust toward someone also carries negative connotations, from "curse you" in Armenia to "you are dishonorable" in Iraq.

In African American gospel and church culture, the same back-of-hand wave that reads as "stop" or dismissal elsewhere carries a completely different meaning. When someone waves their hand during a performance, it signals that the music is so spiritually moving they can barely handle it. It's not rejection. It's the highest form of nonverbal praise, part of the broader call-and-response tradition.

In Italy, a chin flick using the back of the hand (brushing under the chin outward) means "get lost" in the north and in Belgium.

The moutza has modern political weight too. During the 2011 Greek anti-austerity protests, crowds outside Parliament in Syntagma Square directed mass moutzas at the chamber as MPs voted through EU bailout conditions. Academic analysis of the movement describes the gesture as the "spontaneous way of symbolizing citizens' distancing, the breaking up of the political bond with the ruling class, a return of the insult." Thousands of open palms thrust at a building. It's the closest real-world analogue to what 🤚 does digitally: a one-gesture shutdown.

• •The Oxford English Dictionary dates "talk to the hand" to 1995, when linguist Connie Eble recorded it as campus slang at the University of North Carolina. Martin Lawrence's Fox show Martin had been airing since 1992.
• •In 2022, Ebony credited Martin with putting "talk to the hand," "you go girl," and "you so crazy" into the mainstream American vocabulary.
• •The Greek moutza (open palm thrust) is so offensive that Greeks avoid overextending their fingers even when showing the number five, lest it be mistaken for the gesture. 🤚 (back of hand) sidesteps this entirely.
• •In African American gospel church tradition, waving the back of your hand during a performance isn't dismissal. It's the highest form of nonverbal praise, meaning the music is so spiritually powerful you can barely take it.
• •🤚 supports skin tone modifiers from day one (Emoji 3.0, 2016). A University of Edinburgh study found that most people who modify hand emoji skin tones choose ones matching their own, suggesting self-representation rather than decoration.
• •In a TEDx talk, body language researcher Allan Pease reported that an audience hearing a palms-up speaker retained 40% more information than the same content delivered palms-down. Palms-down speakers got rated as "pushy." 🤚 shows neither palm side nor palm back facing the viewer fully. The angle is split down the middle, which is probably why it reads as more guarded than either alternative.
• •Barbara and Allan Pease's study of 350 executives found that 88% of men and 31% of women initiate handshakes with the dominant (palm-down) grip. Hand-angle dominance isn't just texting etiquette: it shows up in boardrooms too.
• •The "hands up, don't shoot" gesture from the 2014 Ferguson protests uses palms forward, not backs of hands. On December 1, 2014, US Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and others performed the gesture on the House floor. It's the opposite of 🤚: both hands, palms visible, surrender rather than dismissal. The emoji keyboard has no direct equivalent.
• •During the 2011 Greek anti-austerity protests, crowds outside Parliament directed mass moutzas at the chamber as MPs voted through EU bailout conditions. Academics described it as "a return of the insult." The 🤚 emoji quietly encodes the back-of-hand angle that sidesteps this cultural landmine entirely.
• •Research on classroom participation consistently finds that male students raise their hands and are called on more than female students, from primary school through university STEM classes. The 🤚 reaction emoji in Slack and Discord inherits that literal raise-your-hand script. Whether it also inherits the asymmetry is an open question.
• •Abhaya mudra, the Buddhist gesture of fearlessness, was first depicted in Gandhara-period statues from the 1st-3rd centuries CE. According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha used it to calm a raging elephant. It's essentially the same arm position as 🤚 but palm-out, which flips the meaning from "talk to the hand" to "be not afraid." 1,800 years of raised-hand gesture history, split by 180 degrees of wrist rotation.

• •Sending 🤚 by itself with no context almost always reads as dismissive ("talk to the hand"). If you mean "wait," pair it with words: "Hold on 🤚 I need a minute."
• •In a professional context, bare 🤚 can read as rude. Use ✋ for workplace "stop" signals, since the palm is more neutral than the back of the hand.
• •Some people use 🤚 to wave hello, but the static pose and back-of-hand angle make it read differently from the actual wave emoji 👋. If you want to say hi, use 👋.

• •Martin Lawrence's Fox sitcom Martin (1992-97) popularized "talk to the hand, because the face ain't listening" as a catchphrase. In 2022, Ebony credited the show with putting the phrase, plus "you go girl" and "you so crazy," into mainstream American English. Co-star Tisha Campbell recalled on Wendy Williams that when they saw strangers using it in public, she thought "Somebody's gonna get their hand cut off."
• •In 2023, a Canadian court ruled that a 👍 thumbs-up emoji constituted a legally binding contract, ordering a farmer to pay $82,200. The judge noted courts "cannot attempt to stem the tide of technology." While the case was about 👍, not 🤚, it made every hand emoji feel heavier. An emoji gesture in a text message now has the weight of a signature.
• •The "talk to the hand" gesture became standard-issue drama on confrontational 1990s talk shows: Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Ricki Lake. Guests flashing the back of their hand to shut down arguments became such a recurring visual that it's inseparable from the era's daytime TV aesthetic.
• •The Greek moutza (open palm thrust at someone's face) is considered one of the most offensive gestures in Greek culture, dating to Byzantine penal practices where criminals had cinder smeared on their faces. The emoji distinction between ✋ (palm, accidentally moutza-adjacent) and 🤚 (back of hand, safe) preserves a cultural line most users don't know exists.

• •🤚 is U+1F91AU+1F91A RAISED BACK OF HAND. Part of Emoji 3.0 (Unicode 9.0, 2016). Supports five skin tone modifiers: U+1F91A U+1F3FBU+1F91A U+1F3FB through U+1F91A U+1F3FFU+1F91A U+1F3FF.
• •Shortcodes: :raised_back_of_hand::raised_back_of_hand: on GitHub and Slack. Discord uses the same shortcode. Note that some platforms render the back-of-hand angle more prominently than others.
• •If your app distinguishes between ✋ (palm, U+270BU+270B) and 🤚 (back of hand, U+1F91AU+1F91A), make sure your emoji picker labels them differently. Users who don't look closely will pick whichever appears first, and the tonal difference between palm and back-of-hand can change the meaning of a message.

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