Apple's Woozy Face emoji with uneven eyes and a wavy mouth

Woozy Face Emoji

2018emojiclassic

Published October 8, 2026

The Woozy Face Emoji 🥴 arrived with Apple's iOS 12.1 update in October 2018, featuring one droopy eye and a crooked, wavy mouth. Within a day, Twitter users were openly asking what it was supposed to mean, kicking off a wave of joke interpretations that turned the drunk-looking face into one of the most meme-worthy additions of that emoji release.

emoji origin memes reaction memes facial expression memes twitter memes 2018 memes

Overview

The Woozy Face Emoji is a yellow smiley with one half-shut eye, one raised eye, and a lopsided wavy mouth, officially named Face With Uneven Eyes and Wavy Mouth by Unicode1. Apple's take on the design pushed the character toward looking visibly drunk, hungover, or dazed, which is how most people ended up reading it1.

The joke that defined the emoji online was that nobody could agree on what it meant. Twitter users treated the ambiguous expression as a prompt, pairing 🥴 with captions about hangovers, financial regret, thirst, or vague emotional damage23. That open-ended quality is what made it stick as a reaction character rather than a literal pictograph.

Origin & Background

Platform
Apple iOS / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2018

On October 30, 2018, Apple shipped iOS 12.1, which added more than 70 new emojis to the keyboard, including the Unicode-approved Face With Uneven Eyes and Wavy Mouth1. Emojipedia announced the rollout the same day, highlighting the new characters coming to iPhone users5.

Apple designed the glyph itself, but the meme interpretation of the emoji came from Twitter users reacting to the release, not from Apple4. The character's exaggerated drunk-face look was a departure from the more neutral Unicode reference design, which helped drive the jokes that followed1.

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How It Spread

The viral moment started on October 31, 2018, when Twitter user @007dpz tweeted a screenshot of the emoji with the caption "Can someone please explain this emoji to me," pulling in more than 760 retweets and 4,300 likes within two days2. The quote-tweet chain that followed became the actual meme format, with users supplying their own captions for what the face was feeling.

One of the most-shared interpretations came from @tiabinghamx, who tweeted that 🥴 was "checking your bank after a night out," picking up over 800 retweets and 4,300 likes in a day3. Other replies to @007dpz offered takes on being hungover, catching feelings, or seeing someone attractive, each framing the emoji as a reaction rather than a defined feeling4.

Twitter itself picked up on the trend and published a Moments page that week collecting the jokes and interpretations6. Coverage from Emojipedia and the ongoing joke replies turned the Woozy Face Emoji into one of the standout characters from the iOS 12.1 release, and it stuck around as shorthand for being drunk, tired, flirty, or just generally out of it4.

Timeline

2018-10-30

Apple releases iOS 12.1 with the Woozy Face Emoji among 70+ new characters; Emojipedia tweets the rollout[5].

2018-10-31

Twitter user @007dpz tweets a screenshot asking for an explanation of the emoji, kicking off the viral quote-tweet chain[2].

2018-11-01

@tiabinghamx posts the "checking your bank after a night out" caption, one of the most-shared interpretations[3].

2018-11

Twitter publishes a Moments page compiling user reactions and jokes about the emoji[6].

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Frequently Asked Questions