Rightwards Pushing Hand Emoji

A hand pushing outward to the right, palm flat, fingers together. 🫸 is the digital "talk to the hand." It showed up in Emoji 15.0 (September 2022) alongside its mirror twin 🫷 (leftwards pushing hand), giving us the first directional pushing gestures in the Unicode standard. The pair was proposed by Oliver Zell in document L2/21-216, who argued the existing hand emoji set lacked a clear way to express physical pushing, rejection, or the "stop right there" gesture that people actually make in real life.

In texting, 🫸 covers a wide range. It's a boundary-setter ("not dealing with this 🫸"), a rejection signal ("no thanks 🫸"), a directional pointer ("look over there 🫸"), and when paired with 🫷, a high five or a squeeze. TechCrunch covered its release as part of the iOS 16.4 update in early 2023, noting the pushing hands could be used either as "stop" or together for a high five. The versatility was the selling point.

What the proposal didn't mention is that pushing an open palm toward someone is one of the oldest and most culturally loaded gestures on Earth. In Greece, it's called the moutza, and it's deeply offensive, dating back to Byzantine times when criminals had ashes smeared on their faces with an open palm. In parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Pakistan, showing someone your open palm carries similar weight. The emoji doesn't know any of this, of course. But the gesture does.

On social media, 🫸 has settled into a few distinct roles. The most common is rejection: "toxic people 🫸" or "Monday energy 🫸" where you're physically pushing something away from your life. Wellness and self-care accounts adopted it fast for boundary-setting content: "things I'm no longer accepting 🫸" followed by a list.

The 🫸🫷 pair gets used for framing and squishing. Put something between them (🫸😊🫷 or 🫸💰🫷) and it looks like you're holding or pressing it. This format took off on Twitter/X and TikTok as a way to emphasize a subject. The high-five reading is there too: 🫷🫸 looks like two hands meeting in the middle.

On Snapchat, 🫸 tends to mean "go check this out" or "I'm pushing you toward something," functioning more like a nudge than a rejection. On Instagram stories, it's used as a visual prompt in polls and questions: "🫸 swipe" or "🫸 next slide."

The emoji supports skin tone modifiers, which matters for representation. All five Fitzpatrick scale variants are available: 🫸🏻 🫸🏼 🫸🏽 🫸🏾 🫸🏿.

🫸 is rarely flirty. Its primary energy is rejection, boundary-setting, or direction. The closest it gets to flirtatious is the playful push: "stop you're making me blush 🫸" which is more teasing than romantic. If someone uses 🫸 after you flirted, they're probably putting up a wall.

• •🫸 after a compliment? They're deflecting, possibly flustered, possibly uncomfortable.
• •🫷🫸 (high five)? Celebratory and friendly, not romantic.
• •🫸 alone in response to flirting? That's a boundary. Respect it.
• •🫸😂 or 🫸🤣? Playful pushback. The laughter softens the rejection into teasing.

Oliver Zell submitted the pushing hand emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium in August 2020 as document L2/21-216. The proposal made a straightforward case: the emoji keyboard had hands that waved (👋), pointed, clapped, and gestured, but none that pushed. The act of physically pushing something or someone away, one of the most basic human gestures, had no dedicated emoji.

Zell proposed both directions (left and right) simultaneously, anticipating that people would want to use them as a pair. The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee agreed, and both were approved as part of Emoji 15.0 in September 2022. They shipped on Apple devices in iOS 16.4 (March 2023) and on Android shortly after.

But the gesture itself is ancient. The open-palm push appears across cultures as both greeting and insult, sometimes simultaneously. In Greek culture, the moutza (showing your open palm with spread fingers) is one of the oldest recorded insults, traced to Byzantine-era criminal punishment where ashes or feces were literally pushed into a convict's face. The gesture survived as a symbolic insult for over a thousand years. In parts of Africa and the Middle East, the open palm carries similar weight.

Meanwhile, in Chinese martial arts, "push hands" (推手, tuīshǒu) is a cooperative training exercise in tai chi dating back to Chen Wangting in the 1600s. Two practitioners push and yield against each other's hands to develop sensitivity and balance. Same gesture, completely opposite intent.

And in 1990s American pop culture, the pushing palm became "talk to the hand," popularized by Martin Lawrence on his sitcom *Martin* (1992-1997) and later immortalized by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 3 (2003). The phrase peaked in the late '90s, but the gesture never really went away. It just got an emoji.

Approved in Unicode 15.0 (September 2022) at codepoint U+1FAF8U+1FAF8. Part of the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block. Proposed by Oliver Zell in L2/21-216 alongside 🫷 Leftwards Pushing Hand (U+1FAF7U+1FAF7). The proposal argued that existing hand emojis (✋, 🤚, 🖐️) showed static positions but couldn't convey the act of pushing. First shipped on Apple iOS 16.4 (March 2023) and Google Android 13.1.

1. 2020Oliver Zell submits pushing hand emoji proposal (L2/21-216) to Unicode Consortium↗
2. 2022Approved in Unicode 15.0 / Emoji 15.0 alongside 🫷 Leftwards Pushing Hand↗
3. 2023Ships on Apple iOS 16.4 and Google Android 13.1↗

This is one of those emojis where the cultural gap is wider than most people realize. In the US, Canada, and most of Western Europe, an outstretched palm means "stop" or "no thanks." It's assertive but not offensive.

In Greece, it's a completely different story. The open palm toward someone (the moutza) is one of the most insulting gestures you can make. It's been offensive since Byzantine times, when it was used to literally push filth into convicts' faces. Today, doing it to a taxi driver in Athens is a good way to get left on the curb. In parts of Pakistan, the open palm is a curse. In Nigeria, depending on the ethnic group, it can carry the force of a profanity.

In Chinese culture, the pushing hand evokes tuīshǒu (推手), the cooperative push-hands exercise in tai chi. It's not hostile at all. It's a practice of sensing your opponent's energy and yielding, dating back to Chen Wangting in the 1600s. Same gesture, opposite meaning.

In Japan and South Korea, the emoji reads more neutrally as a directional or assistive gesture, closer to "please proceed" than "go away."

Be careful sending 🫸 to someone from Greece. They won't see a boundary emoji. They'll see a 1,400-year-old insult.

• •The moutza, the Greek open-palm insult that 🫸 accidentally resembles, dates back to Byzantine-era criminal punishment where ashes or feces were literally pushed into convicts' faces. The gesture has been offensive for over 1,400 years.
• •In tai chi, "push hands" (推手, tuīshǒu) is a cooperative partner exercise developed by Chen Wangting around 1600. Two practitioners push against each other's palms to develop sensitivity and balance. Same gesture, zero hostility.
• •"Talk to the hand" was popularized by Martin Lawrence on his sitcom *Martin* (1992-1997). Arnold Schwarzenegger later delivered it in Terminator 3 (2003). 🫸 is the gesture's digital afterlife.
• •The original Unicode proposal (L2/21-216) predicted the pushing hands would rank around #5 among hand emojis. As of 2026, they're still gaining adoption but haven't cracked the top 5 yet.
• •🫸 is one of the newest hand emojis (2022), while ✋ has been around since Unicode 6.0 (2010). The older emoji got a 12-year head start but can't convey directional force the way 🫸 can.

• •In Greece and parts of the Middle East, the open-palm gesture is a serious insult. Someone from those cultures might read 🫸 as aggressive rather than boundary-setting. If you're texting someone from Greece, a different emoji might be safer.
• •On older devices (pre-2023), 🫸 doesn't render at all and appears as a blank square (□). If you send it to someone with an older phone, they'll just see a box and have no idea what you meant.

• •"Talk to the hand" was first popularized on Martin Lawrence's sitcom *Martin* (1992-1997), where it became a defining phrase of 1990s attitude. Ebony magazine credited the show with making the phrase mainstream, alongside "you go girl" and "you so crazy."
• •Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered "talk to the hand" in *Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines* (2003), using the by-then dated phrase to comedic effect. The scene made it clear the gesture had fully crossed from slang into pop culture nostalgia.
• •Fran Drescher's character on The Nanny (1993-1999) used the palm-push gesture regularly, and she brought it into her 1997 movie Beautician and the Beast. The gesture was peak '90s sassy dismissal.
• •The moutza gesture has been featured in travel guides and "gestures to avoid abroad" articles for decades, appearing in Global Rescue's travel safety guides and Reader's Digest international etiquette lists. 🫸 accidentally digitized one of the world's oldest insults.

• •Codepoint: U+1FAF8U+1FAF8. Part of the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block (U+1FA00-1FAFF).
• •Supports skin tone modifiers: U+1FAF8U+1FAF8 + Fitzpatrick modifier (e.g., U+1FAF8 U+1F3FDU+1FAF8 U+1F3FD for 🫸🏽).
• •Shortcodes: :rightwards_pushing_hand::rightwards_pushing_hand: on most platforms. Older systems may not support it since it's from Emoji 15.0 (2022).
• •Pair programmatically with 🫷 (U+1FAF7U+1FAF7) for the high-five or framing effect. The pair was designed to be used together.
• •Device support: renders on iOS 16.4+, Android 13.1+, Windows 11 22H2+. On older devices, expect a missing glyph (□ or empty box). Always test rendering on target platforms before using in UI.

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