Coiled and forked-tongued, the snake emoji's dominant modern meaning has little to do with reptiles. It's the internet's go-to symbol for a fake friend, a backstabber, someone two-faced. 'Snake in the grass' sums it up: someone who seems fine until they betray you. It still covers the literal animal too.
What 🐍 means
A full-length profile of a snake coiled up with just the head and some amount of the body cocked to the side with a pair of black eyes and a slithery tongue sticking out from its pointed face.
The 🐍 Snake emoji refers to a green snake, but it can be used to suggest other breed and species as well. Although some religious contexts condemn it to be evil and untrustworthy, this emoji can signify beauty, poison, shedding, speed, and danger (the latter two are subjective).
How and when to use it
- If you're talking about a person or a situation that shed some skin and turned completely new (or even different in a not-so-nice way), you can use 🐍 in such a context.
- If you're a Slash fan or you love Slash's Snakepit to bits, then you can use 🐍 in your social media profile name, or while posting about him or his music on social media. You might want to do this even if you're a Slytherin fan and/or you're posting about what a great house it is.
- You can also use 🐍 in your social media profile name if you love snakes in general, or if you're an active conservator and/or part of an organization that saves and loves these reptiles.
- If a conversation or a person is trying to tempt you to do some sinfully blissful things (sinful? yes. Does it feel good? Hell, yeah), you can send 🐍 as a way of saying the other person is being impressively luring.
- Use 🐍 in the caption while sharing snake photography, videos, or even funny content such as memes.
Other Names
- 🐍 Mamba
- 🐍 Serpent
- 🐍 Ophidian
- 🐍 Cobra
- 🐍 Vermin
- 🐍 Python
- 🐍 Boa Constrictor
- 🐍 Rough Green Snake
🐍 in real conversations
What does 🐍 mean from a girl?
Calling someone a fake friend — sweet to your face, talking behind your back. It's the go-to symbol for a backstabber, as in the phrase 'snake in the grass.' Sent after someone gets caught two-timing a friendship, not about anything literal.
What does 🐍 mean in texting?
Betrayal. Someone smiled along, then spilled your secrets or flipped sides the second it was convenient. '🐍🐍🐍' under a screenshot of receipts is basically calling someone out by name without typing the name.
Is 🐍 an insult?
Yes — there's no friendly reading of it. Sending someone 🐍 tells them, or tells everyone watching, that they've been marked as untrustworthy. It's blunt enough that it rarely needs a caption to land.
The lowdown
- Category
- Animals & Nature › animal-reptile
- Codepoints
U+1F40D- Emoji version
- Emoji 0.6
- Shortcodes
:snake:- Keywords
- animal, bearer, Ophiuchus, serpent, snake, zodiac
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.
Pairs well with
Tap any combo to copy the whole thing.
⚡ Quick round
Which joined the keyboard first — 🐍 Snake or 👳♂️ Man Wearing Turban?
Runs with a crowd
🐍 keeps company in animal emojis and green emojis — tap-to-copy sets for when one emoji isn't enough.