Mewing emoji
The mewing emoji is a combo, 🤫🧏, borrowed from a jawline meme. Copy it here and see what people mean by it.
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What the mewing emoji is
There is no single mewing emoji. The “mewing emoji” is a combination: 🤫 (shushing face) followed by 🧏 (deaf person, or its 🧏♂️ 🧏♀️ variants). Mewing is a technique — pressing the tongue to the roof of the mouth, supposedly to sharpen the jawline — named after the British orthodontist John Mew, and it became a meme on TikTok in 2024: someone asks a question, the other person shushes and traces their jawline as if to say “can’t talk, mewing”. The 🤫🧏 pairing recreates that gesture in text.
So the combo means I’m not answering, played for laughs, or simply signals membership of the joke. It sits in the same slang family as 🗿 and the “sigma” vocabulary covered in the slang emoji guide. The deaf person emoji was added in Emoji 12.0 for its real purpose, sign-language representation, and using it for a joke is worth a moment’s thought.
Compare the options
| Emoji | Name | Use it for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| shushing face / deaf personU+1F92B · U+1F9CF | The mewing meme, “can’t talk” | Two separate emoji; the second is the deaf-person sign | |
| shushing faceU+1F92B | Shh, a secret | See the shh emoji guide | |
| moaiU+1F5FF | Deadpan, sigma | See the moai emoji guide | |
| face with steam from noseU+1F624 | Determined, “locked in” | Often sits with mewing/gym content |
Copying the combo
- 🤫🧏 — the basic version
- 🤫🧏♂️ — with the man variant, the most common on TikTok
- 🤫🧏♀️ — the woman variant
- 🤫🧏🗿 — with the deadpan stone head for extra sigma
Paste any of them into the combo studio to adjust. The gendered versions are ZWJ sequences and may show as two symbols on older phones.
Chat examples
Real messages with 🤫, and a reply that fits.
can’t talk, mewing 🤫🧏
😂
🧏♂️ jawline loading
sure
mewing streak day 10 🤫
impressive
Questions people ask
What does 🤫🧏 mean?
“Can’t talk, I’m mewing” — a joke refusal to answer, from a 2024 TikTok trend about the mewing jawline technique.
Is there an actual mewing emoji?
No. It is a combination of the shushing face and the deaf person emoji.
What is mewing?
A practice of resting the tongue against the roof of the mouth, promoted online as a way to improve jaw definition and named after orthodontist John Mew. The emoji joke is about the gesture, not the technique.
About this guide
Written and maintained by the Emoji Directory editorial team, without ads or sponsorship. Meanings describe how the emoji is commonly used in public posts and messages, not an official definition. Names, code points, versions, keywords and translations come from the Unicode Emoji 18.0 and CLDR data; shortcodes from the gemoji project. Last reviewed . Spotted a mistake or a new usage? Tell us, or read how the directory is made.
