🥲️ Smiling face with tear emoji

What is 🥲️ called?

🥲️ is called the Smiling face with tear emoji.

What does 🥲️ mean?

The smiling face with tear emoji represents bittersweet happiness, being emotionally moved, or smiling through sadness. It can show pride at a farewell, relief after a struggle, or gratitude that brings one quiet tear.

The smile separates it from 😢 Crying face, while the tear makes it more emotionally mixed than 🙂 Slightly smiling face. For tears caused by laughter, use 😂 Face with tears of joy.

This emoji is useful when an event is both happy and sad: a graduation, a child growing up, a meaningful memory, or the end of a difficult chapter.

Other meanings

It can mean holding back stronger emotion, putting on a brave face, or pretending to be fine despite hurt. In an ironic message, the small smile may communicate resigned frustration.

Example Usage

My little sister graduates today 🥲

After months of treatment, I finally got the all-clear 🥲

More details

Its Unicode code point is U+1F972, and it was introduced in Emoji 13.0. Its single tear and slight smile deliberately combine positive and sad emotional signals.

Related emoji

Crying emojis

• 🤣️ Rolling on the floor laughing
• 😂️ Face with tears of joy
• 😢️ Crying face
• 😭️ Loudly crying face

Happy emojis

• 😀️ Grinning face
• 😃️ Grinning face with big eyes
• 😄️ Grinning face with smiling eyes
• 😁️ Beaming face with smiling eyes

Sad emojis

• 😕️ Confused face
• 🫤️ Face with diagonal mouth
• 😟️ Worried face
• 🙁️ Slightly frowning face

Visual description

A round yellow face has open eyes, a small closed smile, and one blue tear running from one eye down the cheek. The expression remains composed rather than openly sobbing.

Platforms vary which cheek carries the tear, its size, and whether the eyes or eyebrows look slightly strained.

⚠️ Emoji appearance varies by platform.