🦍

Gorilla Emoji 🦍

Broad-chested and calm-faced, the gorilla emoji depicts a silverback at rest — but clearly not to be messed with. It's shorthand for raw strength and confidence, with 'gorilla mode' now gym slang for going all-out, and it occasionally nods to Harambe, the gorilla whose 2016 death sparked one of the internet's longest-running memes.

What 🦍 means

A giant, muscular gorilla in its signature pose with its face looking ahead while its arms are strongly supporting the body. This black-furred great ape is sometimes portrayed with a reddish forehead in the emoji world.

Sensationalized by the King Kong series, the 🦍 Gorilla emoji signifies strength, power, fearlessness, might, and even dread to a certain extent. Although terrorizing in reality, gorillas can seem cuddly and affectionate at times.

This emoji is shown with just the face on some platforms.

How and when to use it

🦍 works fine to describe a person, typically a man, with buffed up muscles.
The 🦍 emoji can also be used to denote a person's situation with a task that they need or had to endure through. For example, an intense workout at the gym.
A person with more brawn over brain can be described using 🦍.
Anything that brings about a sense of nature and wildlife can be depicted using 🦍 emoji.
Gorillas are smart apes, and despite their muscular build, their appearance might even seem as cuddly to many. So, this mood can be represented through the 🦍 emoji.
In the most literal sense, if the subject matter involves a gorilla, what better emoji than 🦍?

Other Names

🦍 Primate
🦍 Ape
🦍 Buff
🦍 Blackback
🦍 Silverback
🦍 King Kong
🦍 Humanoid
🦍 Tough
🦍 Beast

The lowdown

Category: Animals & Nature › animal-mammal
Codepoints: U+1F98D
Emoji version: Emoji 3.0
Shortcodes: :gorilla:
Keywords: animal, gorilla

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.