Shark emoji
🦈 is the animal and the compliment. Copy it here with its ocean combos.
Published · Updated
What the shark emoji means
🦈 (shark, Emoji 5.0) is the animal — Shark Week, beach warnings, aquarium trips — and the compliment: a “shark” is someone ruthlessly good at business, cards or sport. It also appears in the “baby shark” song jokes parents make, and in ocean combos with 🌊 🐬 🏄. No variants.
Unicode name: shark · U+1F988 · Emoji 3.0 (2016) · group: Animals & Nature.
How people use it
- Ruthless skill: “a 🦈 at poker”
- Ocean: 🦈🌊
- Shark Week: July posts
- Baby Shark: parents’ jokes
Compare the options
| Emoji | Name | Use it for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| sharkU+1F988 | Shark; a ruthless operator | Newer than the fish | |
| dolphinU+1F42C | Dolphin; friendly sea | See the blue emoji guide | |
| fish / tropical fishU+1F41F · U+1F420 | See the fish emoji guide | ||
| water waveU+1F30A | Wave | See the wave emoji guide |
The shark emoji as a meme
The shark emoji 🦈 appears in plenty of memes, most famously the Baby Shark song that took over the internet. Parents joke about hearing it on repeat, and the emoji often accompanies those playful complaints. Film fans also use it for Jaws references, pairing it with 🌊 or 🛥️ to set the scene. In some online spaces, a shark emoji can signal someone being predatory or cutthroat in a joking way, like “betting on me? I’m a shark 🦈”. The meme tone is usually light-hearted, not literal.
Chat examples
Real messages with 🦈, and a reply that fits.
🦈 shark week
🌊
🦈 saw one snorkelling
WHAT
🦈 baby shark
no
Questions people ask
What does 🦈 mean about a person?
That they are aggressively good at something — sales, negotiation, a game.
When was the shark emoji added?
Emoji 5.0, in 2017.
Is there a shark fin emoji?
There isn’t a standalone shark fin emoji; the shark emoji 🦈 shows a full shark with a fin, and it can be used when people want to signal a shark fin, like in Jaws references.
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.
