kaomoji

English

Etymology

From Japanese 顔(かお)文(も)字(じ) (kaomoji), from 顔(かお) (kao, “face”) + 文(も)字(じ) (moji, “letter, character”).

Noun

kaomoji (plural kaomoji or kaomojis)

1. A text-based Japanese emoticon, distinct from a Western emoticon in that it is meant to be written and read horizontally, and often includes a larger variety of characters (originally from Shift JIS, now including Unicode).

   Coordinate term: emoji

   • 2010, Misa Matsuda, “Japanese mobile youth in the 2000s”, in Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson, Damien Spry, editors, Youth, Society and Mobile Media in Asia, Routledge, →ISBN, page 35:

     While kaomoji and emoji express contexts or moods that cannot be conveyed through textual information alone, they are also used to compensate for the lack of personalization in electronic text that otherwise exists in hand-written form.

   • 2011, Francisco Yus, Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated Communication in Context, John Benjamins, published 2011, →ISBN, page 170:

     For example, the typical emoticon for smile, :-), is the kaomoji ^--^.

   • 2013, Hyisung C. Hwang, David Matsumoto, “Nonverbal Behaviours and Cross-Cultural Communication in the New Era”, in Farzad Sharifian, Maryam Jamarani, editors, Language and Intercultural Communication in the New Era, Routledge, →ISBN, page 130:

     Katsuno and Yano (2002) insisted that the development of kaomoji (emoticon in Japanese) online has important connections with Japanese popular culture.

   • 2017, Carmen Lee, “Linguistic diversity and language choice online”, in Multilingualism Online, London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 31:

     According to Nishimura, kaomojis are so frequently used in Japan that they have been “codified” in dictionaries.

   • 2018, Xuanyi Chew, “Basic Facial Detection”, in Go Machine Learning Projects: Eight Projects Demonstrating End-to-End Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics Applications in Go, Packt Publishing, →ISBN, page 276:

     Going back to the kaomojis, note that, even in their highly abstract form, they are capable of displaying emotions. In order of display, the kaomojis show happiness, indifference, love, dissatisfaction, and anger.

   • 2019, Leo Palladino, Martin Green, Karen Roemuss, “Communication and working effectively in the industry”, in Professional Hairdressing and Barbering, Australian and New Zealand 2nd edition, Cengage Learning, →ISBN, page 170:

     Kaomojis are not used much in Western culture, but they are like emoticons except they can be read front-on and are from a fuller set of keyboard characters.

Further reading

• kaomoji on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Japanese

Romanization

kaomoji

1. Rōmaji transcription of かおもじ