Emoticon
An emoticon is a representation of a facial expression or emotion made with text characters, such as :-) or :-(
What it means, how it is used and where it comes up, with its related concepts.
What it is and how it works
Its first use is attributed to the computer scientist Scott Fahlman, who in 1982 proposed :-) and :-( on a Carnegie Mellon University message board to flag joke posts. Western emoticons are read by tilting the head; Japanese ones, called kaomoji, such as (^_^), are read horizontally.
It should not be confused with an emoji, which is a pictograph included in the Unicode standard and displayed as an image. Many apps automatically convert typed emoticons into emoji, which explains why the two are often used interchangeably.
Also known as
Smiley