22 emoji you’re probably using wrong

Sometimes words just aren’t enough to convey what you have to say.

Emoji has been around since 1999, but these winky faces and seemingly random characters have only caught on fairly recently.

A lot of that is thanks to Apple’s iOS 6, which allowed iPhone owners to easily integrate emoji into their keyboard for the first time in 2012. 

Since then, Apple routinely updates its emoji, most recently adding a person shrugging, an avocado, and a fox to the lineup.

But not all emoji are easy to decipher. With the help of Emojipedia — yes, that’s a real thing — we can now tell you what some of the most mysterious emoji actually mean. 

Megan Rose Dickey contributed to an earlier version of this story.