The cigarette emoji is the tiny noir prop of Unicode: a lit cig with a glowing ember and a soft wisp of gray smoke. On Apple/iOS, it’s a slim white cigarette with an orange-brown filter, ash darkening the tip, and a delicate curl of pale smoke drifting upward—clean, minimal, unmistakably “someone just took a drag.” It signals smoking, sure, but also that gritty, retro cool associated with old movies, jazz-club alleys, and trench-coat detectives. Think Bogart squint, James Dean lean, Marlboro-man mythology—now condensed into one smoky little pictogram.
Online, people drop 🚬 to mean “I need a break,” “the tea was too strong,” or “that take was so spicy I need a smoke.” It’s big for sarcasm and drama: me after reading the group chat at 2 a.m. 🚬; after the boss’s email? 🚬. It can lean flirtatious in a cheeky, cinematic way—“that pic is dangerous, babe 🚬”—or serve pure meme energy paired with 💀 for dark humor, or ☕ for gossip vibes. Aesthetic posters use it to channel edgy, Y2K-Tumblr moods, while others deploy it ironically to mock the try-hard “bad habit” look. And yes, it’s the opposite of the no-smoking sign 🚭—this one says the cigarette is definitely lit.
Definition
A lit cigarette. Smoking is an expensive activity that is considered a bad habit because it is highly addictive and terrible for your health. Surgeon General's Warning: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy. Stay away!
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Emoji History The emoji code/ image log of changes.
This emoji was part of the proprietary / non-standardized emoji set first introduced by Japanese carriers like Softbank. These emojis became part of the Apple iPhone starting in iOS 2.2 as an unlockable feature on handsets sold in English speaking countries.
In iOS 5 / OSX 10.7, the underlying code that the Apple OS generates for this emoji was changed.
