How it works
A disgusted kaomoji screws its eyes shut over a wavy mouth, as in (>﹏<), pushes out a tongue or crosses its arms. A few throw up. Tap one to copy it.
Read the full guide
One mark you can see in each group
A wavy mouth is mostly ﹏, which Unicode names Wavy low line. Tongue pushed out hangs the box-drawing piece ┰ from the mouth. Arms crossed or pushing it away puts 乂 beside the face, or a hand each side. Cringe text faces keep the eyes shut over a small mouth.
Disgusted Japanese emoticon, with a word
The last group adds a word. まずい means not tasting good and くさい means smelly, both as Wiktionary gives them. The English ones include ew, yuck, bleh and gross.
- A cringe emoticon can also be a hard stare: (ಠ﹏ಠ) borrows its eyes from the Kannada script.
- The vomiting emoji and the sideways :-###.. are on sick emoji.
Questions and answers
What is the vomit emoticon made of?
Here it is ཀ, the Tibetan letter ka, standing in for a stream from the mouth: (´ཀ`). Two more faces use a spray of dots, as in (>Д<)∴, and one a wavy stream, (>д<)~~~.
How do you make a throw up emoticon or text face?
Draw two eyes screwed shut and put something running from the mouth, as in (>ཀ<). The letter is not on a US keyboard, so copy the face from the group Throwing up.
What is a barf emoticon?
Another name for the same faces: barf, vomit and throw up all mean the group Throwing up here. The other groups are for things that are only gross: a wavy mouth, a tongue out, crossed arms.
Why does a disgusted kaomoji show an empty box?
A device with no font for a borrowed character draws a box in its place. The note under each tile names what is borrowed: ಠ is a Kannada letter and ཀ a Tibetan one.