❤️ Red Heart

What does the heart emoji mean?

Heart emoji refers to any number of emoji that digitally represent the conventional symbol of a heart or feature it in some way. It is used extensively in electronic communication to convey love, affection, romance, friendship, sympathy, gratitude, happiness, passion, pain, etc. There is no one emoji officially named Heart emoji, but the specific emoji most likely meant by it is the Red Heart emoji, ❤️.

Examples of heart emoji

This is the best thing EVER 💖
—@sarahknig, _X (formerly Twitter), 28 Sep. 2024

I ❤️ a Hate-Watch. Don’t You?
—Alissa Wilkson, New York Times (title), 19 Aug. 2024

Happy 4th of July! #USAIndependenceDay / From❤️💛❤️ to 💙🤍❤️
—@SpainInTheUSA, X (formerly Twitter), 4 Jul. 2024

My best decision, my love....I love you. / Happy Valentine's Day! ❤️
—@violadavis, Threads, 14 Feb. 2024

Where do the heart emoji come from?

The earliest known use of the digital characters referred to as emoji date back to the Sharp PA-8500, a PDA (personal digital assistant) released in Japan in 1988. This device contained a set of emoji-like pictures, including representations of a heart with an arrow, as symbol of being in love, and a broken heart.

Subsequent Japanese devices released in the 1990s featured further depictions of hearts, including a playing card heart suit in 1990, that gave rise to contemporary emoji, standardized by the nonprofit organization Unicode in 2010 in Unicode 6.0 (an update to their universal text and character encoding standard). This update included (among other heart-related emoji) the Red Heart emoji ❤️, which is based on an earlier non-colored heart symbol called Heavy Black Heart, released by Unicode in 1993. The update also included Heart Suit emoji, ♥️, originally named Black Heart Suit, which is often used as or confused with the Red Heart emoji ❤️ and sometimes displayed like a small, black heart on certain platforms.

There are now over 30 emoji (listed below) that represent a heart or incorporate the symbol in some manner. Data consistently shows that the Red Heart emoji ❤️ remains not only the most used heart emoji but also one of the top used of the 1000s of emoji overall. The heart emoji altogether are among the most frequent and popular.

Love Letter 💌 Heart with Arrow 💘 Heart with Ribbon 💝 Sparkling Heart 💖 Growing Heart 💗 Beating Heart 💓 Revolving Heart 💞 Two Hearts 💕 Heart Decoration 💟 Heart Exclamation ❣️ Broken Heart 💔 Heart on Fire ❤️‍🔥 Mending Heart ❤️‍🩹 Red Heart ❤️ Pink Heart 🩷 Orange Heart 🧡 Yellow Heart 💛 Green Heart 💚 Blue Heart 💙 Light Blue Heart 🩵 Purple Heart 💜 Brown Heart 🤎 Black Heart 🖤 Grey Heart 🩶 White Heart 🤍 Heart Suit ♥️ Smiling Face with Hearts ​​🥰 Smiling Face with Heart Eyes 😍 Smiling Cat with Heart Eyes 😻 Face Blowing a Kiss 😘 Heart Hands 😍 Anatomical Heart 🫀 Couple with Heart 💑 (with 3 gender and 25 skin tone variations) Kiss 💏 (with 3 gender and 25 skin tone variations) Love Hotel 🏩

How are heart emoji used?

How do we use heart emoji? We cannot count the ways. Put simply, the heart emoji are texted and typed in all variety of manners to convey the wide spectrum of love, affection, attraction, friendship, compassion, thankfulness, contentment, loss, heartache, and so much more in all their kinds, degrees, intents, and nuances.

Someone may use, as is common, a single Red Heart emoji ❤️ as a way to say thank you, indicate they like or acknowledge something online, or wish a loved one happy birthday or good night. Or, as is also common, they may combine various heart and other emoji together to heighten how excited they are by a concert, sporting event, travel experience, TV show, sandwich they had for lunch, you name it: ❤️💖✨💙💞😀🎊💛🖤❤️❤️😍💜🧡💕✨💕❣️🥰 .

Compared to the other colored heart emoji (such as Green Heart 💚) the Red Heart ❤️, Pink Heart 🩷, and their embellishments (e.g., Sparkling Heart 💖) are used more commonly for direct expressions of romantic or familial love and affection. The colored heart emoji do not have specific, set meanings that one should avoid using. They are employed in countless, idiosyncratic ways to add emphasis in messages about people and things connected in some way to their color and its symbolism.