I Salute You, Saluting Face Emoji 🫡

Why 🫡 Has more in Common with 😂 Than You Might Think

You’ve seen things, saluting face emoji. Things people wouldn’t believe. Elon taking over our favorite bird app 🫡💙. Unicode adding beans 🫘 to our keyboards. Cringe Tiktoks 🫡. Group texts about dinner reservations 🫡. You remain unflinching, dedicated to the cause — present and reporting for duty.

Saluting emoji 🫡 is all about showing up. It's a way to say: I'm here. I heard you. I got this. It can be sincere or sarcastic, funny or solemn. It communicates agreement, recognition, and sometimes farewell with a single raised hand and a straight face.

amanaemonesiac @cix_eria

🫡 emoji of the year i think. genuinely don’t remember how i used to communicate before it

So... Why Do We Salute, Anyway? (｀∇´ゞ

The internet is full of half-true histories about the hand-head salute gesture. An invention of the Roman Republic? Cute, but unlikely. Knights lifting visors? Dubious. Is it related to tipping one’s hat to say hello or raising your right hand to show you’re unarmed? Possibly???? The origin of how or why we began to salute is the stuff legends are made of (mostly because every article online cites a Wikipedia page riddled with ^{[citation needed].})

While we may never know why or how we first started saluting one thing is for sure: the gesture’s intent is to indicate that you’re not hostile. Guess what else we do to communicate we are not threatening and friendly? That's right, laughter 😂 which also happens to be the most popular emoji by a large margin.

Different styles of salutes around the world

Different Salutes, One Emoji

A salute emoji might seem like an obvious addition to the Unicode Standard — but in practice, it’s complicated. While the act of gesturing is universal their specific forms are deeply cultural. What looks respectful in one country might be very awkward in another. A face-hand salute is no different and I’m not trying to get court-marshaled here.

Military salutes vary not just by country but also by branch. In the British Royal Navy, the palm faces out. In India, the hand is vertical, palm inward. In the U.S. and much of Europe, it’s palm-down, fingers tight. Some styles touch the forehead, others the temple or eyebrow. Each version says the same thing — just in a different accent ;-)

To capture a gesture that transcends borders, branches, and contexts, this design is a diplomat. Rather than copying one military style, the proposal offered a hybrid: a gesture that feels like a salute without strictly belonging to any single tradition. It’s a flexible, gestural sketch — the idea of an salute, a nod to many customs without impersonating any of them. It helps it stay relevant and useful across dozens of platforms and billions of users worldwide.

And then, there’s Apple’s design. One of many interpretations based on the Unicode framework.

NGL. Apple’s take is extremely funny. The forefinger just above the eye, palm turned at a 45 degree angle, all fingers rigid. It’s tidy. Formal. Very... Serious. Who ever drew this was clearly taking orders from someone who used to serve in the U.S. military or watched a lot of boot camp movies.

In many ways, this uptight and self-serious take is the reason it is so fun to subvert. It’s something you can dress up and down for any occasion. And, like any true American hero it required great sacrifice: to fit that perfectly proper military salute into a standard neatly confined square space, half the face would have to be eradicated.

Farewell, left side face, you served us well 🫡

(￣^￣)ゞ

If emoji are emotional punctuation, saluting face is periodT. Be it used in formal occasions ("Thank you for your service 🫡"), on the daily ("Got it, will do 🫡"), or when flirting ("My Roman Empire is soup 🫡🍲"), saluting face emoji does it all. A little goofy. A little respectful. The perfect emoji for an era full of paradoxes — when you feel everything and nothing at once.