Tired Face Emoji

A yellow face with scrunched X-shaped eyes, furrowed eyebrows, and a broad open frown. It looks like someone who's been awake for 36 hours, just missed their flight, and found out their car has a flat tire. The face is exhausted past the point of composure.

The name says "Tired Face" but the expression conveys more than tiredness. Emojipedia notes it "commonly conveys various degrees and tones of frustration" alongside exhaustion. It's the face you make when you're not just tired but done. Fed up. Running on fumes and the fumes are running out.

😫 and 😩 are siblings. Both express exhaustion/frustration. 😫 has scrunched X-eyes (more intense, face contorted). 😩 has furrowed but open eyes (more dramatic, face pleading). 😫 reads as "I can't take this" while 😩 reads as "please make it stop." In practice, most people use them interchangeably, though Google Trends data consistently shows 😩 at roughly twice the search interest of 😫.

A 2022 study of 1,082 participants classified 😫 in the "strong negative sentiment" cluster with a valence of just 2.74 out of 9 and arousal of 6.91 — meaning people read it as highly activated and deeply unpleasant. But that academic label misses the full picture. On social media, 😫 doubles as a pleasure emoji ("this food is INSANE 😫"), a thirst-trap response, and a general intensity marker. The official sentiment score only captures one half of a two-faced emoji.

Added in Unicode 6.0 (2010). Despite the name, it's more "frustrated" than "sleepy." For actual tiredness, 😴 or 😪 work better. 😫 is emotional exhaustion with the physical exhaustion on top.

😫 is the groan emoji. You don't type it, you groan it.

"Monday again 😫" (existential fatigue). "Three hours of traffic 😫" (frustration). "This group project 😫" (fed up with others). "FIVE MORE PAGES 😫" (overwhelmed by workload). The scrunched eyes signal someone whose face has contorted from stress.

There's also an unexpected positive use. "This dessert is SO GOOD 😫" or "Your music is incredible 😫." Here the groan is from pleasure so intense it's overwhelming. The X-eyes read as "I can't handle how good this is." It's the same facial contortion, but from ecstasy rather than agony. On Instagram and TikTok, 😫 shows up in comments under thirst traps and food content alike, where the wide-open mouth reads as a gasp of desire.

Gen Z uses 😫 and 😩 almost interchangeably for dramatic emphasis. Both have evolved past their literal meanings (tired/weary) into general-purpose intensity markers. "I want that SO BAD 😫" is desire. "This is KILLING ME 😫" is humor. The common thread: whatever is happening, it's hitting hard enough to distort the face. Where the two diverge: 😩 leans theatrical ("save me"), while 😫 leans visceral ("I'm already gone").

😫 is rarely flirty on its own, but context flips it fast. In a complaint about work, it's venting. Under a selfie or thirst trap, the open mouth and scrunched face read as desire. The same way a groan sounds different in frustration vs. pleasure, 😫 reads differently based on what triggers it.

• •😫 as a reaction to your selfie? Flirty. They're groaning because you look too good.
• •😫 in a conversation about work or school? Friendly venting, not flirtation.
• •😫 after 'I miss you'? Loaded. That's longing, not tiredness.
• •😫 on its own with no context? Ask. It could go either way.

😫 descends from Japanese mobile carrier emoji sets that predated Unicode standardization. SoftBank's 1997 set and NTT DoCoMo's 1999 set both included faces for distress and exhaustion, drawn from the visual language of manga where scrunched eyes and open mouths signal overwhelm.

When Unicode standardized emoji in version 6.0 (2010), they codified 😫 as U+1F62BU+1F62B TIRED FACE. But the name was always a compromise. The face isn't yawning or drifting off. It's a contortion, the kind of expression you make when the fifth thing goes wrong in a row. "Frustrated face" or "overwhelmed face" would've been more accurate, but Unicode naming tends to be conservative.

The mismatch between name and usage created a quiet problem for sentiment analysis. A 2015 PLOS One study on emoji sentiment found that 😫's real-world usage was far more varied than its "tired" label suggested. Researchers at the Jozef Stefan Institute tracked 😫 across millions of tweets and found it appearing in positive, negative, and neutral contexts with roughly equal frequency when used for emphasis rather than literal tiredness.

In 2024, 😫 got a companion. 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes was approved in Unicode 16.0, immediately hailed as the "official emoji of adulthood" and the World Emoji Awards' Most Anticipated Emoji of 2024. Where 😫 is acute (a groan in the moment), 🫩 is chronic (the face of someone who's been running on four hours of sleep for a decade). They coexist rather than compete.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F62BU+1F62B TIRED FACE. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of the Smileys & Emotion category. Keywords: face, tired. Despite the name, it's used more for frustration and overwhelm than literal tiredness. The CLDR name has never been updated to match real-world usage.

1. 1997SoftBank's J-Phone includes distressed face emoji in the first known carrier emoji set↗
2. 1999NTT DoCoMo's Shigetaka Kurita creates 176 emoji including emotional faces, inspired by manga conventions↗
3. 2010Standardized in Unicode 6.0 as U+1F62B TIRED FACE↗
4. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0. Available across iOS, Android, Windows
5. 2024🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes approved in Unicode 16.0 as 😫's chronic exhaustion counterpart↗

In Japan, where emoji originated, scrunched-eye faces draw from manga visual conventions where X-eyes and wide mouths signal emotional overwhelm. Japanese readers parse 😫 immediately because the visual grammar is native to their culture.

In the US and UK, 😫 has drifted far from its "tired" label. Gen Z uses it as a general-purpose intensity marker for both positive and negative contexts, something the original Japanese design didn't anticipate.

In workplace contexts globally, a University of Michigan study found that emoji usage patterns in remote work communications varied significantly across cultures, with American and European developers using negative-sentiment emoji like 😫 more freely than developers in East Asian contexts where emotional restraint in professional settings is more valued.

• •😫 is named "Tired Face" but is used more for frustration and overwhelm than literal tiredness. The CLDR name hasn't caught up to real-world usage.
• •The same scrunched-face expression works for both agony and ecstasy. 'This traffic 😫' (negative) and 'This dessert 😫' (positive) use the same visual for opposite emotions.
• •😫 and 😩 are the emoji twins of dramatic exhaustion. Both have evolved past their literal meanings into general-purpose intensity markers in Gen Z texting.
• •A 2022 study in Nature classified 😫 with a valence of 2.74/9 (strongly unpleasant) and arousal of 6.91/9 (highly activated). It sits in the same sentiment cluster as 😡 Angry Face and 🤬 Swearing Face — company that would surprise anyone who's seen it used under food posts.
• •🥱 Yawning Face spiked to 67 on Google Trends when it launched in late 2019, briefly outpacing both 😫 and 😩. By 2023, it faded to background noise. Turns out people already had their exhaustion emojis covered.
• •😩 ranks around #44 in global emoji usage. 😫 doesn't crack the top 50, making it the less popular of the two twins despite sharing nearly identical use cases.

• •Sending 😫 after someone shares good news about themselves. You meant 'I'm jealous/in awe' but it reads as 'your success exhausts me.' Add context: 'That's amazing, I'm so jealous 😫' makes the intent clear.
• •Using 😫 in a work chat without context. 'This project 😫' is fine among peers. Sent to a manager, it can read as complaining. Add 'haha' or frame it as humor to soften the edge.
• •😫 as a reply to someone venting about real problems. They want empathy, not your own exhaustion face. Try ❤️ or a written response instead of matching their groan.

• •🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes was approved in Unicode 16.0 (2024) and named the Most Anticipated Emoji of 2024 at the World Emoji Awards. Web Designer Depot called it "the most brutally honest thing Apple has ever released." It's 😫's chronic counterpart: where 😫 is a groan in the moment, 🫩 is the face of someone who's been exhausted for years.
• •A University of Michigan study (2022) found that tracking emoji usage, including negative-sentiment faces like 😫, could predict remote worker dropouts with 75% accuracy. Workers who stopped using emoji altogether were 3x more likely to leave within a year. The study analyzed millions of GitHub posts during COVID.
• •The burnout conversation that dominated workplace culture from 2020 onward made 😫 a shorthand in articles, therapy memes, and mental health content. A 2022 report found 43% of employees globally report burnout, rising to over 50% among Gen Z. 😫 became the face of "I'm not okay but I'll push through."
• •Emoji sentiment researchers consistently flag 😫 as a problem case. A 2022 Nature study placed it in the same "strong negative" cluster as 😡 and 🤬 (valence 2.74/9). But an ACL workshop paper on emoji sentiment roles found that emojis like 😫 can function as "reversers" that flip the sentiment of surrounding text: "This pasta is KILLING me 😫" is positive despite every individual word and the emoji both reading as negative in isolation.

• •😫 is U+1F62BU+1F62B. Unicode name: TIRED FACE. Common shortcodes: :tired_face::tired_face: (Slack, Discord, GitHub). Part of Unicode 6.0 (2010).
• •For sentiment analysis: 😫 is contextually positive OR negative. 'This traffic 😫' = negative. 'This food 😫' = positive. Your NLP needs surrounding text analysis to disambiguate. Don't assume negative.

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