Some foods are better photographed than eaten, and 🤤 is the reply they get. The face has a line of drool running from the corner of its mouth, and it was added in Unicode 9.0 in 2016. It is nicknamed the “drool face” or “mouthwatering emoji.” The key nuance is anticipation: this is the face of someone who wants the thing, not someone who is eating it.
How it’s used
- Reacting to a food photo: “Where is this?? That looks unreal 🤤”
- Wanting a thing: “New keyboard just dropped 🤤🤤”
- Late-night cravings: “Posting ramen at midnight is a crime 🤤”
- Napping: “Fell asleep in lecture and drooled on my notes 🤤”
- Attraction: “That photoshoot is unreal 🤤”
😋 (face savoring food) is the satisfied one, tasting and enjoying, while 🤤 hasn’t had the first bite yet. 😍 (heart-eyes) is “I adore this,” and 🤤 is closer to “I want this now.”
Korea, Japan and the English-speaking world
English has the idiom “drooling over,” and the emoji follows it to food, gadgets, travel destinations and celebrities alike. “Drooling” also has a mild thirsty edge: when aimed at a person, it signals interest beyond politeness, so it can feel like too much from a stranger or a colleague. The other everyday meaning is the sleeping one, with a small joke about falling asleep on a train or at a desk. Food accounts and bakery pages lean on 🤤 in captions to promise that a post is going to be delicious.
Korean readers see it as the emoji version of 군침이 돈다 (“my mouth is watering”) and 침샘 폭발 (“my salivary glands are exploding”). It is a staple under restaurant reviews, mukbang videos and late-night snack photos. As in English, putting it on a photo of a person can come across as appraising, so it stays mostly within friends and fan communities.
Japanese uses the name よだれを垂らした顔 (“drooling face”), and it answers 美味しそう (“looks delicious”). It is a typical response to 飯テロ, the habit of posting tempting food photos late at night, often alongside words like じゅるり. People tend to split 😋 for 美味しい (“delicious”) and 🤤 for 食べたい (“I want to eat it”).
Where it gets misread
- On a photo of a person, 🤤 can read as leering rather than complimenting. Skip it with colleagues and acquaintances.
- It overlaps with the sleepy faces: 😴 is asleep and 😪 has the snot bubble. 🤤 suggests someone sleeping so deeply they drool.
- It is not a sick face. Nausea is 🤢 and vomiting is 🤮, and the drool is not meant to look gross.
- In a serious or sad conversation it only reads as a joke.
Design differences by platform
The drool is usually a thin, clear-blue line running from one corner of the mouth, but eyes and mouth shape change from vendor to vendor. A version with half-closed eyes and a smile reads as eager craving, while a version with firmly shut eyes reads as asleep. All of Apple, Google (Noto), Microsoft Fluent and Samsung rely on that single trail of drool, so the main meaning survives across devices.
