Jiong

Jiong (Chinese: ; pinyin: jiǒng; Jyutping: gwing2) is a once obscure Chinese character meaning a "patterned window".[1] Since 2008, it has become an internet phenomenon and widely used to express embarrassment and gloom, because of the character's resemblance to a sad facial expression.[2]

Jiong (囧) in Kaishu, Clerical, Seal and Oracle bone scripts (top to bottom)

Original meanings

  1. Window, according to Xu Shen's 2nd-century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi: “窻牖麗廔闓明” (an open and light window).
  2. Granary. 米囧 means “put the new rice into a granary”.
  3. Sacrificial place. Based on Chouli.
  4. Toponym.

Internet emoticon

A stylised version of the 囧 emoticon

The character for jiong is nowadays more widely used on the Internet as an ideographic emoticon representing a range of moods, as it resembles a person's face. It is commonly used to express ideas or feelings such as annoyance, shock, embarrassment, awkwardness, etc.

The use of jiong as an emoticon can be traced to 2005 or earlier; it was referenced on 20 January 2005 in a Chinese-language article on orz.[3] The character is sometimes used in conjunction with orz, OTZ or its other variants to form "囧rz", representing a person on their hands and knees (jiong forming the face, while r and z represent arms and legs respectively) and symbolising despair or failure.

Encoding

The character is included in Unicode at U+56E7 ().[4] Unicode also includes U+518F (), which is considered a variant.[5]

Character information
Preview
Unicode name CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-56E7 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-518F
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode22247U+56E720879U+518F
UTF-8229 155 167E5 9B A7229 134 143E5 86 8F
Numeric character reference囧囧冏冏
Shift JIS[6]153 10399 67
EUC-JP[7]143 182 2508F B6 FA209 200D1 C8
GBK / GB 18030[8]135 22987 E5131 21583 D7
KPS 9566-2011[9]200 130C8 82
Big5[10]202 168CA A8202 106CA 6A
EUC-TW[11][12]142 162 163 2008E A2 A3 C8142 162 163 1728E A2 A3 AC
CCCII / EACC[4][13][14]33 115 11921 73 7733 105 11021 69 6E
Kangxi Dictionary reference[15][16]Page 217, character 10Page 129, character 12

References

Bibliography

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