Kaomoji

//ˈkaʊməʊd͡ʒi// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A text-based Japanese emoticon, distinct from a Western emoticon in that it is not rotated sideways, and often includes a larger variety of characters (originally from Shift JIS, now including Unicode).

    "While kaomoji and emoji express contexts or moods that cannot be conveyed through textual information alone, they are also used to compensate for the lack of personalization in electronic text that otherwise exists in hand-written form."

Synonyms

All synonyms
emojiverticon

Example

More examples

"Japanese texts frequently use emoji or kaomoji in place of using a full stop at the end of messages."

Etymology

From Japanese 顔(かお)文(も)字(じ) (kaomoji), from 顔(かお) (kao, “face”) + 文(も)字(じ) (moji, “letter, character”).

Related phrases

shift jis

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.