👋🏽
waving hand: medium skin tone
Unicode: 1F44B 1F3FD
Description
A waving hand, showing the palm and all fingers extended, with a medium skin tone.
Group:
People & Body > hand-fingers-open
Status:
fully-qualified
Emotion:
Typically represents a greeting, farewell, or general acknowledgment. It conveys friendliness and a sense of 'hello' or 'goodbye'.
Backstory
The waving hand emoji (👋) was introduced in Unicode 6.0 in 2010. The skin tone modifier (✋🏽) was added in Unicode 8.0 in 2015, allowing users to customize the emoji's appearance to better represent diversity.
Usage Examples
- Greeting someone: 'Hey there! 👋🏽'
- Saying goodbye: 'See you tomorrow! 👋🏽'
- Acknowledging someone from a distance: '👋🏽'
- Expressing friendliness: 'Just wanted to say hi! 👋🏽'
Cultural Differences
Western culture:
Widely used for greetings (hello, goodbye) and acknowledging someone's presence.
East Asian culture:
Similar usage for greetings; sometimes used in a more playful or informal context than a bow.
Global:
Universally understood as a gesture of waving to or from someone.