Emoji klaxon: 37 new ones to be released next year, possibly including “unicorn face”
Emojis are those little smiley faces teenage girls pepper their text messages with – but it turns out they have a serious source. As with characters like letters and symbols, they're determined by the Unicode Consortium – which has just announced a whole raft of new emojis, to be released next year. Excited face.
In a blog post, the Unicode Consortium said the 37 new symbols are likely to include "unicorn face", "cricket bat and ball" and (of course) "zipper-mouth face". Food lovers will be delighted by the addition of "hot dog" and "burrito", while sports fans can look forward to "volleyball" and "field hockey stick and ball".
The blog even gave emoji fans a little glimpse of what's to come, with this tasty-looking morsel:
Source: Unicode Consortium
The new symbols will form part of Unicode 8.0, scheduled for release in mid 2015. Possible bad news for unicorn fans, though: the 37 symbols are "not yet finalised – so some may not appear in the release", said the consortium.
Still, it's already announced "modifiers" for emojis, allowing them to be given more diverse skin tones:
The new emojis it's considering adding include:
Faces, hands and zodiac symbols
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Zipper-mouth face
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Money-mouth face
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Face with thermometer
- Nerd face
- Thinking face
- Face with rolling eyes
- Upside-down face
- Face with head-bandage
- Robot face
- Hugging face
- Sign of the horns
- Crab
- Scorpion
- Lion face
- Bow and arrow
- Amphora
Symbols of religious significance
- Prayer beads
- Kaaba
- Mosque
- Synagogue
- Menorah with nine branches
- Place of worship
- Dhyani Buddha
Most popularly requested emoji
- Hot dog
- Taco
- Burrito
- Bottle with popping cork
- Popcorn
- Turkey
- Unicorn face
- Cheese wedge
Missing top sports symbols
- Cricket bat and ball
- Volleyball
- Field hockey stick and ball
- Ice hockey stick and ball
- Table tennis paddle and ball
- Badminton racquet and ball