Speak-no-evil Monkey Emoji

A brown monkey face with both hands pressed over its mouth. This is Iwazaru, the third of the Three Wise Monkeys, and it means "I said something I shouldn't have" or "I'm keeping quiet." Where 🙈 hides from what it sees and 🙉 blocks what it hears, 🙊 is about controlling what comes out of your mouth.

In texting, that translates to three main uses: the verbal slip ("I just told your surprise party plans to the birthday girl 🙊"), the secret-keeper ("I know something but I'm not telling 🙊"), and the self-censor ("I was GOING to say something mean but 🙊"). It's the emoji of output control, of catching words after they've already left or deliberately holding them back.

Dictionary.com notes that all three monkey emojis "enjoy popularity because monkeys are cute, and the covering of one's mouth has a way of conveying a feeling with few words: embarrassment, surprise, self-deprecation." But 🙊 has a specific competitor problem. 🤭 (face with hand over mouth) does the same job without the monkey, and Emojipedia suggests it as a direct alternative. Google Trends confirms 🤭 gets 8x more search interest than 🙊. The human face won the "oops" race.

🙊 shows up most often in group chats when someone accidentally reveals information. "Wait, you weren't supposed to know about that 🙊" is the classic use. It's performative regret: the person already said the thing, and the monkey hands covering the mouth arrive a beat too late, which is exactly the joke.

The emoji gets interesting in gossip contexts. Sending 🙊 after sharing tea signals "I probably shouldn't have told you this, but I did, and we both know it." The covered mouth is plausible deniability. "I was trying not to say it!" Sure you were.

Like 🙈 and 🙉, 🙊 is mostly used as part of the full trio 🙈🙉🙊 for total avoidance. Solo usage is less common than its siblings. People reach for 🤭 when they want "oops, I said that" without the monkey, or 🤐 when they want to signal sealed lips. 🙊 lives between those two: more playful than 🤐, more animal than 🤭.

There's a shared concern across all three monkey emojis. Emojipedia published a detailed account of monkey emojis being weaponized for racial harassment, particularly against Black athletes. The emoji itself references a 2,500-year-old Japanese philosophical concept, but context determines whether any emoji is harmful.

🙊 is Iwazaru (言わざる, "speak not"), the third of the Three Wise Monkeys. The shared backstory of the trio (Confucius, the Japanese pun, the Tōshō-gū carving) is told in full on the 🙈 page.

Iwazaru's specific lesson is "speak not what is contrary to propriety." Of the three, this is the one most directly about self-control rather than avoidance. Mizaru (see-no-evil) and Kikazaru (hear-no-evil) deal with incoming information. Iwazaru deals with outgoing information. You can't unsee or unhear, but you can choose not to speak. That's a different kind of discipline, and it's why 🙊 carries a slightly different emotional weight than its siblings: 🙈 is reflexive hiding, 🙉 is blocking input, but 🙊 is about restraint.

The name shares the same Japanese pun that created all three: the negative suffix "-zaru" (not) sounds like "saru" (monkey). Iwazaru = "speak-not" = "speak-monkey." A teaching about controlling your words became a monkey covering its mouth, purely because of a homophone.

In 2022, the Danish film Speak No Evil) (Danish: Gæsterne) premiered at Sundance and became a cult horror hit. Director Christian Tafdrup used the proverb's title to explore how Nordic social politeness can become dangerous: the protagonists are too polite to leave a hostile situation, literally "speaking no evil" about what's happening until it's too late. Critics called it "a piercing commentary on the ways we accommodate others to the point of self-subjugation." The 2024 American remake) starring James McAvoy grossed $77 million worldwide and introduced the concept to an even wider audience. Whether they know it or not, people who watched those films and then see 🙊 in a text carry the proverb's weight with them.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F64AU+1F64A SPEAK-NO-EVIL MONKEY. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of a trio with 🙈 See-No-Evil Monkey (U+1F648U+1F648) and 🙉 Hear-No-Evil Monkey (U+1F649U+1F649), occupying consecutive codepoints. Represents Iwazaru (言わざる, "speak not"), the third of the Three Wise Monkeys. A proposal for a fourth monkey (Shizaru, "do-no-evil") was submitted to Unicode in 2017 by Christoph Päper but was not adopted.

1. -500Confucius's Analects include "speak not what is contrary to propriety" among four negations
2. 800Buddhist monks bring the teaching to Japan, where Iwazaru (speak-not/speak-monkey) emerges from the -zaru/-saru pun
3. 1636Hidari Jingoro carves Iwazaru on the right side of the Three Wise Monkeys panel at Tōshō-gū Shrine, Nikkō↗
4. 2010Unicode 6.0 approves 🙊 (U+1F64A) alongside 🙈 and 🙉 as a trio↗
5. 2017Christoph Päper submits a Unicode proposal for a fourth monkey, Shizaru (do-no-evil). Not adopted.↗
6. 2022Danish film Speak No Evil premieres at Sundance, exploring the danger of social silence↗
7. 2024American remake Speak No Evil starring James McAvoy grosses $77M worldwide↗

The Eastern vs Western meaning split applies to all three monkeys but hits hardest with 🙊. In Japanese Buddhism, Iwazaru represents moral discipline: choosing not to spread gossip, slander, or harmful speech. It's an aspirational ideal about controlling your words.

In Western culture, "speak no evil" flipped to mean complicity. If someone "speaks no evil," they're staying silent when they should speak up. The phrase is used to accuse whistleblowers who didn't blow the whistle, witnesses who didn't testify, bystanders who didn't intervene. The 2022 Danish horror film) built its entire premise on this Western reading: the victims are too polite to say anything, and that silence kills them.

When you send 🙊 in a text, you're using a third interpretation that belongs to neither tradition: playful verbal regret. "I said something I shouldn't have, tee hee." Not Buddhist restraint. Not dangerous silence. Just a monkey covering its mouth because it gossiped too much.

• •🙊 is named Iwazaru (言わざる), meaning both "speak not" and "speak-monkey" thanks to the Japanese pun that created all three wise monkeys. The concept has nothing inherently to do with monkeys.
• •A formal Unicode proposal for a fourth monkey emoji (Shizaru, "do-no-evil") was submitted in 2017 by Christoph Päper. The proposed design showed a monkey with hands behind its head. It was not adopted.
• •The 2022 Danish horror film *Speak No Evil*) premiered at Sundance and explored how social politeness becomes dangerous. Director Christian Tafdrup said it was about how Nordic culture is "intensely driven by social conventions." The 2024 American remake) starring James McAvoy grossed $77M worldwide.
• •Emojipedia suggests 🤭 (face with hand over mouth) as a direct alternative to 🙊. Google Trends confirms the replacement: 🤭 gets 8x more search interest. The human face covering its mouth won the "oops" emoji race.
• •In the Tōshō-gū Shrine carving, Iwazaru sits on the right side of the three-monkey panel, after Mizaru (eyes) and Kikazaru (ears). The order follows Confucius's original sequence: see, hear, speak.
• •The Tōshō-gū carvings at Nikkō, Japan were carved by Hidari Jingoro in the 17th century as part of 8 panels depicting the "way of life" through monkeys. The three wise monkeys are just one scene in a larger Confucian moral narrative that most people don't know exists.

• •People sometimes use 🙊 when they mean 🤐 (sealed lips). 🙊 means you already said it and regret it. 🤐 means you won't say it at all. The difference: 🙊 is retroactive, 🤐 is preventive.
• •Like all monkey emojis, 🙊 has been documented as a tool for racial harassment. Context determines everything. The emoji references Iwazaru, part of a 2,500-year-old philosophical teaching, but that history doesn't prevent misuse.
• •"Speak no evil" means different things in different cultures. In Japan, it's positive (moral discipline, choosing not to gossip). In the West, it's negative (staying silent when you should speak up). In texting, it's neither: it's just "oops, I said that."

• •The 2024 film *Speak No Evil*) starring James McAvoy grossed $77M worldwide, making the proverb's name recognizable to a mainstream audience. The film's marketing used the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" motif directly.
• •The 2022 Danish original) (Gæsterne) premiered at Sundance and became a cult favorite. Critics described it as a commentary on how the desire to be polite can become self-destructive.
• •The Planet of the Apes (1968) courtroom scene features three chimpanzees enacting the Three Wise Monkeys pose: one covers eyes, one covers ears, one covers mouth.

• •🙊 is U+1F64AU+1F64A. Standalone character, no variation selectors. Part of a consecutive trio: U+1F648U+1F648 (🙈), U+1F649U+1F649 (🙉), U+1F64AU+1F64A (🙊).
• •Common shortcodes: :speak_no_evil::speak_no_evil: (GitHub, Slack, Discord). In Slack, searching "monkey" returns all five monkey emojis; searching "speak" narrows to 🙊.
• •If building emoji analytics, track 🙈🙉🙊 as a sequence. 🙊 appears solo less than 🙈 but more than 🙉, making it the middle child of standalone usage.

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