kaomoji

English

Etymology

From Japanese 顔文字 (kaomoji), from 顔 (kao, “face”) + 文字 (moji, “letter, character”).

Noun

kaomoji (plural kaomoji)

1. A text-based Japanese emoticon, distinct from a Western emoticon in that it is meant to be written and read horizontally, and often includes a larger variety of characters (originally from Shift JIS, now including Unicode).
   • 2010, Misa Matsuda, "Japanese mobile youth in the 2000s", Youth, Society and Mobile Media in Asia (eds. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson, & Damien Spry), Routledge (2010), →ISBN, page 35:

     While kaomoji and emoji express contexts or moods that cannot be conveyed through textual information alone, they are also used to compensate for the lack of personalization in electronic text that otherwise exists in hand-written form.

   • 2011, Francisco Yus, Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated Communication in Context, John Benjamins (2011), →ISBN, page 170:

     For example, the typical emoticon for smile, :-), is the kaomoji ^--^.

   • 2013, Hyisung C. Hwang & David Matsumoto, "Nonverbal Behaviours and Cross-Cultural Communication in the New Era", Language and Intercultural Communication in the New Era (eds. Farzad Sharifian & Maryam Jamarani), Routledge (2013), →ISBN, page 130:

     Katsuno and Yano (2002) insisted that the development of kaomoji (emoticon in Japanese) online has important connections with Japanese popular culture.

See also

• emoji

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Japanese

Romanization

kaomoji

1. Rōmaji transcription of かおもじ