😱 Meaning: What does the face screaming in fear emoji mean?

The 😱 emoji represents a a face screaming in fear : two big white eyes and an mouth wide open. It expresses the fear, the shock and astonishment, but also—depending on the context—exaggerated excitement or pure, ironic sarcasm.

You can also find out more by clicking here are the 10 emojis that 9 out of 10 people misunderstand. And you, do you really know them?

To test your knowledge of emojis like 😱, you can take the quiz here :

😱 Emoji face screaming in fear: what are its different meanings?

L'emoji of a face screaming in fear shows big white eyes without a pupil, a mouth wide open who's screaming and two hands pressed against her cheeks. The front often turns into the light blue, as if the face had lost all color due to the’horror.

Depending on the context, this emoji can convey very different meanings:

• the shock and disbelief in the wake of terrible news.
• The terrified, a real scare (reptiles, horror movie, nasty surprise).
• A intense excitement and a sense of wonder—for example, when a fan meets their idol.
• the sarcasm, when you overreact for comic effect.

On some platforms, the face is distorted even further to heighten the sense of terror. The design varies slightly between Apple, Google, Samsung and Twitter, but the cry remains recognizable.

For Halloween, it's often associated with pumpkins 🎃. Its feline, parodic version takes the form of the’scared cat emoji 🙀.

Here are a few examples of sentences using this emoji:

1. I'm shocked 😱!
2. Was he kidnapped? 😱
3. It gives me chills 😱.
4. I'm absolutely terrified of anything that's a reptile 😱.
5. I just met my favorite star 😱!

😱 and its cousins of fear: which one should you choose?

Many emojis look alike, but the subtle differences matter. The a face screaming in fear is still the most intense, reserved for truly emotional shocks. Here's how to tell them apart:

Origin of the smiley

L'emoji of a face screaming in fear was not created by chance. Its design draws direct inspiration from the frozen, anguished scream in the iconic painting by’Edvard Munch, The Scream. This artistic lineage is recognized by leading authorities on emojis such as Emojipedia, even if theUnicode Consortium does not officially document this type of inspiration.

From a technical standpoint, this emoji has come a long way. It was first proposed in 2007 in document L2/07-257 of the’Unicode Consortium, written by Kat Momoi, Mark Davis and Markus Scherer. This text used the symbols that were common on Japanese mobile networks at the time.

It was then encoded in Unicode 6.0 in 2010, under the code point U+1F631. It has finally been officially included in the specification Emoji 1.0, published in 2015. That's why you can find it today on all platforms, from’Apple at Google via Samsung.

Characteristics of the screaming smiley face

This emoji is one of the most commonly used emojis on the web to convey a feeling of fear. Here are its complete technical specifications, along with its part numbers Unicode :

Do you want to express a terrified in your posts or comments? Don't hesitate to use the screaming face emoji 😱.

And if you need a little help figuring out other emojis like the smiley face 😨, l'red smiley face emoji 😊 or even theanxious face emoji 😧, check out our other articles.