Scissors Emoji

A pair of open scissors. ✂️ covers the literal (cutting paper, hair, fabric), the figurative ("cutting ties," editing, ending), and the playful (rock-paper-scissors). One of the oldest tool emojis in Unicode, encoded in Unicode 1.1 in 1993 as a text dingbat before color rendering existed, then retroactively promoted to emoji in 2015.

Real-world scissors are ancient. The earliest examples are spring scissors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, around 1500–1000 BCE: a single piece of metal bent into a U, with blades on each end. The pivoted scissors we use today are a Roman invention from about 100 CE. Contrary to the persistent myth, Leonardo da Vinci did not invent scissors. They were already 3,000 years old by the time he was sketching.

The emoji is always rendered open, blades spread. That's Unicode's convention ("BLACK SCISSORS" in the original character name) and every platform respects it. Apple draws silver metal blades with red plastic handles. Google goes with flat blue handles. Samsung uses orange. The handles vary; the open-blade shape never does.

One practical oddity: ✂️ needs a variation selector (FE0F) to render as the color emoji. Without it, many systems show the monochrome dingbat. This is why ✂️ sometimes appears differently between iMessage and legacy platforms.

✂️ has surprising range for a tool emoji.

Cutting ties. The dominant figurative use on TikTok and Instagram. "✂️ him out" means ending a friendship, breakup, or toxic connection. Captions like "cutting off energy that doesn't serve me ✂️" are common in therapy-speak and self-care posts.

Haircuts and hair reveals. Salon accounts pair ✂️ with hair emojis. "New chop incoming ✂️💇" is the universal "I got bangs" post.

Crafts and DIY. Scrapbooking, sewing, and paper-craft posts use ✂️ alongside 🧵 and 📏. A small but devoted corner of #craftok lives here.

Editing. Writers and editors drop ✂️ into drafts. "Cut this section ✂️" or "needs trimming ✂️" in document comments.

Rock-paper-scissors. ✊✋✂️ is the universal emoji shorthand for the game. The sequence works across languages.

Couponing. Before digital coupons took over, ✂️ tagged grocery-coupon Facebook groups. Still common in deals and extreme-couponing communities.

On Unicode's frequency list, ✂️ sits mid-tail. Not a face or a heart, but significantly used because it has so many distinct contexts.

Scissors are one of humanity's oldest compound tools. The earliest known examples are spring scissors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, dated between 1500 and 1000 BCE. A single strip of metal is heated, bent into a U, and two blades are fixed at the ends. Squeeze the U closed, the blades meet, the thing you're cutting is severed. That design stuck around for over a thousand years.

Pivoted scissors, the two-blade single-rivet design everyone recognizes today, appeared in the Roman Empire around 100 CE. This is a completely different tool conceptually: one compound lever, one pivot, two independent blades. The mechanical advantage is huge, and it's basically unchanged 2,000 years later.

Leonardo da Vinci did not invent scissors. The myth persists, but scissors were already 3,000 years old when he was sketching. He did study scissors in his notebooks, which is probably the origin of the confusion.

Mass production came much later. Robert Hinchliffe, an English manufacturer in Sheffield, began producing quality pivoted scissors in cast steel in 1761. Sheffield became synonymous with scissors and knives, and the industrial-revolution manufacturing base made scissors affordable for the average household for the first time.

Left-handed scissors weren't common until after 1970. The difference isn't the handle; it's the blade orientation. In a right-handed pair, the right blade sits on top when open, so a right-handed user can see their cutting line. Flip the blades and the same design becomes left-handed. Scissors labeled "left-handed" that only reverse the handles aren't actually left-handed. They cut worse than standard scissors for left-handed users.

The character U+2702 BLACK SCISSORS entered Unicode 1.1 in June 1993, from the Zapf Dingbats typeface) designed by Hermann Zapf in the 1970s. That's the same typeface that gave us ✏️, ✈️, and ✒️. When Unicode absorbed the Dingbats block, scissors came along, and was later recognized as emoji in Emoji 1.0 (2015).

1. -1500Spring scissors. Mesopotamia and Egypt produce the earliest scissor design: one metal strip, bent into a U, blades at each end.
2. 100Pivoted scissors. The Roman Empire introduces two-blade single-pivot scissors. The design doesn't meaningfully change for the next 1,900 years.
3. 1761Sheffield mass production. Robert Hinchliffe starts industrial manufacturing of cast-steel pivoted scissors. Sheffield becomes the scissors capital.
4. 1970True left-handed scissors. Scissors engineered with reversed blade orientation become widely available. Before this, lefties just suffered.
5. 1993Encoded in Unicode 1.1. U+2702 BLACK SCISSORS enters Unicode as a text dingbat.
6. 2015Emoji 1.0. Retroactively recognized as an emoji alongside other Dingbats.

• •The oldest known scissors are Egyptian spring scissors from around 1500 BCE: a single metal strip bent into a U shape with blades at both ends.
• •Pivoted scissors, the modern design, were invented by the Romans around 100 CE. The design has barely changed in nearly 2,000 years.
• •Leonardo da Vinci did NOT invent scissors, despite popular myth. Scissors were already 3,000 years old when he was alive.
• •Robert Hinchliffe of Sheffield started mass-producing pivoted scissors in 1761, making them affordable for the first time. Sheffield steel became synonymous with quality blades.
• •True left-handed scissors have reversed blade orientation, not just mirrored handles. They weren't widely available until after 1970.
• •Rock-paper-scissors traces to Chinese "shoushiling" during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). It evolved in Japan into "sansukumi ken," then "janken," and spread globally in the 1920s.
• •The character U+2702 was encoded in Unicode 1.1 (1993) from the Zapf Dingbats typeface, making ✂️ one of the oldest characters that eventually became an emoji.
• •Scissors always render in the open position across every platform because the Unicode character name is "BLACK SCISSORS" and vendors have held that convention since the first emoji set.
• •The ✂️ emoji requires a variation selector (U+FE0F) to render as color emoji. Without it, older systems show the monochrome dingbat version.