Post by @tschfflr@fediscience.org

2026-07-17 16:19 UTC

"which emojis are used the least often?" - Great question, and we rarely find data on this! But luckily, we studied this at least for two corpora with German users (and admittedly only for face emojis). So: Many object or symbol emojis (from the "tail end" of the emoji list) are very, very rarely used. Overall, faces and hearts are the most frequent. Among the face emojis, we compiled the full list of usages from a huge Twitter corpus (semi-public communication, 2014-2022) and a much small WhatsApp chat corpus (private or group communication). You can find the frequencies in this table linked below (and sort by frequency by clicking on the column). The least frequent face emoji in the large corpus was the "frowning face with open mouth" 😦, which most people have never seen before. Personally, I think it's pretty ambiguous and not very useful, as there are better emojis for anything it might express. #emojis #linguistics #WorldEmojiDay https://tscheffler.github.io/2024-Face-Emoji-Norming/ratings.html

Replies (3)

@tschfflr@fediscience.org 2026-07-17 16:30

"what about double meanings like in 🍆🥦 and 🍑?" - Ah yes, these ambiguities are very famous. In order to get a new emoji approved nowadays, it's even helpful to be able to point out additional meanings and usages that are metaphorical in this way. The Unicode consortium is wary of introducing too many new emojis, and so those that can "carry more weight" and fill many needs at once are preferred. In internet corpora the vegetable-related uses of these emojis are probably quite rare (but I must admit I haven't checked yet) - and the metaphorical meanings probably dominate. Though there are also many insider uses of emojis that aren't super widely known outside of their circle. This is comparable to other kinds of linguistic codes or innovations (e.g. in youth language) and not limited to only emojis. #WorldEmojiDay #emojis #linguistics

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@Kuchenschwarte@fnordon.de 2026-07-17 16:22

@tschfflr@fediscience.org what about double meanings like in 🍆🥦 and 🍑?

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@LappenjammerDieZweite@social.vivaldi.net 2026-07-17 16:44

@tschfflr@fediscience.org Can I say that in the olden days of ye twitter there was an account featuring the least used emojis? And of course there were people trying to upvote their favourites. I admit I always supported the cable car emoji (whimsical :ablobgrin: )

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