The emoji for being unwell, or for not wanting to catch whatever's going around — mask on, eyes shut. It covers contagion and precaution, reacting to something genuinely gross, and it became a fixture of pandemic-era health messaging.
What 😷 means
A yellow-faced emoji with closed, drooping eyes and a mask covering the lower half of the face. This emoji signifies feeling sick physically or as a reaction to something sickening, gross, disturbing, or awful.
Besides being the current scenario (2020 - COVID 19), the 😷 Face With Medical Mask suggests 'covering up' or 'masking up' for health safety in general. This emoji plays along the lines of "Omg, so sick!" or "That's terrible!".
How and when to use it
- If you just encountered something really gross, use this as a way of saying you want to stay safe from such grossness.
- If you're feeling sick and can't make it to a party, send this emoji along with an apology to your buddies or whoever invited you.
- While sending something disturbing, you can use this emoji to give the receiver a gist of the subject (that its sick).
Other Names
- 😷 Sick Face
- 😷 Masked Face
- 😷 Gross
- 😷 Disgusting
- 😷 Awful
- 😷 Ew
- 😷 Yuck
- 😷 Coronavirus
- 😷 COVID-19
- 😷 Surgical Mask
- 😷 Mask Face
😷 Face Mask
😷 in real conversations
What does 😷 mean in texting?
Being sick, contagious, or taking precautions — "can't make it, running a fever 😷" is the classic use, with a closed-eyed masked face doing the explaining. It also covers allergy season and bad air-quality days, not just full-blown illness.
Does 😷 always mean someone's sick?
No — it's just as often a reaction to something gross. "He ate that off the floor 😷" isn't about a virus at all; it's a squeamish flinch, closer to a disgusted grimace than an actual health update.
Why do people still send 😷 now that the pandemic's over?
Because the underlying uses never went away — allergies, colds, wildfire smoke, and grossed-out reactions all predate COVID and outlasted it. The emoji just had one very visible moment in the spotlight; day to day it's back to ordinary sick-day and squeamish duty.
The lowdown
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion › face-unwell
- Codepoints
U+1F637- Emoji version
- Emoji 0.6
- Shortcodes
:mask:- Keywords
- cold, dentist, dermatologist, doctor, dr, face, germs, mask, medical, medicine, sick
How it looks across platforms
Seeing a blank box instead of the emoji somewhere? Here's why that happens. Curious why the designs above don't match to begin with? Here's why that happens too.
⚡ Quick round
Which joined the keyboard first — 😷 Face with Medical Mask or 👨👧👧 Family: Man, Girl, Girl?