emoji (French)

Where does "emoji" come from?

The word emoji is a direct loan from Japanese, combining the characters for 'picture' (e) and 'character' (moji). While it originated as a term for these specific written symbols in Japanese, it has been globally adopted to describe the digital icons we use to represent concepts and objects today.

Full etymology tree

• emoji (French), 'emoji (“digital graphic icon used to represent a concept or object”)'
  • borrowed 絵文字 (emoji) (Japanese), 'pictograph'
    • compound 絵 (e) (Japanese), 'picture'
    • compound 文字 (moji) (Japanese), 'a letter, a character (symbol for a sound or a word)'
      • inherited 文字 (mjun dziH) (Middle Chinese)

Ancestors

• emoji (Japanese)

Updated July 2026

More words starting with E

Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris