Person shrugging: medium-light skin tone Emoji

People

A person with medium-light skin shrugging their shoulders with palms facing upward and a neutral, slightly confused facial expression. The gesture conveys a clear sense of uncertainty or lack of information.

Usage Context

This is the go-to response for texting 'I don't know' or 'whatever.' It functions as a non-verbal shortcut for those moments when you have no answer, don't care, or are simply letting a situation go. It is frequently used alongside emojis that express frustration like 🤦 or resignation like 😑.

History

While the shrug gesture has been a universal physical expression for ages, the shrug emoji arrived in Unicode 9.0 in 2016. Its popularity exploded as mobile messaging moved toward shorthand and meme-heavy communication, eventually becoming a staple of internet culture to denote passive acceptance of chaotic events.

Details

Glyph

🤷🏼

Unicode

U+1F937 U+1F3FC

Shortcode

:emoji_u1f937_1f3fc:

HTML Entity

&#xD83E;&#xDD37;&#xD83C;&#xDFFC;

Specifications

Vendor Google

Category People

Subcategory person-gesture

Unicode Version 6.0

Emoji Version 1.0

License CC-BY 4.0

Google Noto License

Emoji graphics by Twitter/X, licensed under CC-BY 4.0

Noto Color Emoji graphics are copyrighted by Google Inc. and licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Font files may also be subject to the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

Apache 2.0 SIL OFL 1.1 Noto Repository