Smileys & Emotion · Emoji 0.6
😨Fearful Face Emoji
It usually means someone is feeling scared, shocked, or surprised. People use it to express a strong negative emotion in text messages.
The 😨 emoji is a face with wide eyes and an open mouth.
- Unicode
- U+1F628
- Released
- 2010
- Shortcode
- :fearful:
- Skin tones
- No
01 — Meaning
What does the 😨 Fearful Face emoji mean?
One character, many names — these are the wordings people actually type, all 8 of them.
People also look for it as afraid emoji.
02 — Platforms
Fearful Face emoji on iPhone, Android, WhatsApp and X
Vendors keep repainting this one. Counting the archived versions further down, the fearful face has been drawn in 4 ways.
See the whole set the way each system draws it — iPhone emojis, Android emojis, WhatsApp emojis and Discord emojis.
03 — Copy & codes
Fearful Face emoji copy and paste
Everything here is the same character in different notation — including the shortcode chat apps know it by, :fearful:.
All emoji copy and paste →In your code
Pick the notation your language wants. They all resolve to the fearful face, code point U+1F628.
04 — How to type
How to type the 😨 Fearful Face emoji
Every system hides the emoji key somewhere else. Here is where, plus the raw codes for U+1F628 when there is no key at all.
05 — Download
Fearful Face emoji PNG and SVG
Grab the fearful face as transparent PNG or SVG. Each system ships its own drawing, and the licence stays with the vendor, all 9 of them.
Emoji PNG library →
Apple
Google
Twitter / X
Facebook
Microsoft
06 — Combinations
Fearful Face emoji combinations
Ready-made combos built around fearful face for bios, captions and comments. Tap to copy.
All combinations →Want two emojis fused into one sticker instead of set side by side? Emoji Kitchen does that with 😨, and there are more ready-made pairs in emoji combinations and aesthetic emoji combos.
08 — In conversation
What 😨 means from a girl or a guy
The same character carries a different intent depending on the sender and the message before it.
09 — Apps
What 😨 means on TikTok, WhatsApp and Discord
One code point, several readings — where the fearful face lands changes how it is taken.
11 — History
Where the 😨 Fearful Face emoji came from
This one is older than Unicode emoji: Japanese carriers were drawing it on their handsets years before the standard existed, which it finally joined in 2010.
Same character every time — U+1F628 never changed. Only the drawing did, and only because each vendor redraws its own set. Someone on an older phone still sees the older picture.
Long before Unicode had emoji, Japanese carriers shipped their own picture sets.
😨 existed there as
NTT DoCoMo E757, KDDI au EAC6, SoftBank E40B.
Those codes are why it survived into the standard at all — Unicode had to keep Japanese messages readable.
Fearful Face was approved as U+1F628 and shipped in Emoji 0.6 (2010). Emoji 0.6 is the original 2010 batch that came over from the Japanese sets.
Every vendor keeps its own artwork, so 😨 is redrawn by Apple, Google, Twitter / X, Facebook, OpenMoji, Samsung, Microsoft, WhatsApp, JoyPixels. The character you send never changes — only the picture does.
12 — FAQ