The bowling emoji rolls in with a ball and pins, shouting STRIKE! without saying a word. People drop it when they’ve nailed something, cleared a to-do list like pins, or are hyping league night and cosmic bowling plans. It also works ironically—send it after a spectacular flop to label it a perfect gutter ball. In group chats, it doubles as a low-effort event flyer: who’s renting the shoes and who’s buying pizza?
On Apple/iOS, you’ll see a glossy red bowling ball with three black finger holes set beside two white pins with classic red neck stripes, angled like they’re about to get obliterated. The shading is smooth and slightly 3D, giving that just-waxed-lane vibe you can almost hear squeak under rented shoes. Online, it pairs beautifully with “rolling into the weekend,” Big Lebowski nods (the Dude abides), and Wii Sports nostalgia—cue the wrist-strap PSA. Flex it for a “turkey” (three strikes), brag about a 7–10 split, or poke fun at life knocking you down like pins. Flirty usage pops up too: a cheeky let’s roll for a bowling date, or playful trash talk before league night. It’s nostalgic, a little neon-carpet-core, and perfect for calling your shot—whether you’re chasing strikes or just aiming not to yeet it into the gutter.
Definition
Bowling is a game that requires the player to roll a bowling ball down a 60 foot long bowling lane towards a collection of bowling pins. There are typically ten bowling pins arranged in a triangle with four rows of pins. Each row of pins increases in number with the first row containing one pin and last row containing four. A bowling game is made up of ten frames (ten turns) and each player is given two chances per frame to knock down all the pins. If the player knocks down all the pins in a single turn, it is called a "strike." If it takes two turns to knock down all the pins, it is called a "spare." A perfect score is 300 and requires that 12 consecutive strikes are rolled.
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Emoji History The emoji code/ image log of changes.
This emoji first appeared in OSX / iOS after the iOS 5 update.
Emoji General Information
Twitter Emoji Popularity (Rank)
1347 of 2393
Apple/iOS Picture
Google Android Picture
Google Hangouts Picture
Twitter.com Picture
LG Emoji Picture
Samsung Emoji Picture
Phantom Open Emoji Picture
Not created yet
ASCII Conversion
"Short Code" Name
:bowling:
Keywords
Bowl, Bowling, Ball, Pin, Strike, Spare, Game
Unicode Category Information
Unicode Category
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
Unicode Range
1F300–1F5FF
Unicode Subcategory
Game Symbols
Editorial Comment
"The Dude" from the movie The Big Lebowski loves this emoji.
Proposed Unicode Information & Notes
Unicode Category
Activities/work/entertainment
Unicode Subcategory
Game Symbols
Names & Annotations
BOWLING
Symbol Information
U+1F3B3 proposed
Proposal Identifier
e-810
Character Mapping/Crosswalk Notes
DoCoMo
[ボーリング]
KDDI
#753 ボーリング 「booringu」 U+EB43 SJIS-F447 JIS-7B28
Softbank
[ボーリング]
Emoji Character Encoding Data
Emoji Code Version
iOS 5 - Current
UTF-8 Unicode Character(s)
🎳
UTF-8 Character Count
1
Character(s) In Input
AppleColorEmoji Font (available in OSX/iOS)
🎳
Decimal HTML Entity
🎳
Hexadecimal HTML Entity
🎳
Hex Code Point(s)
1f3b3
Formal Unicode Notation
U+1F3B3
Decimal Code Point(s)
127923
UTF-8 Hex (C Syntax)
0xF0 0x9F 0x8E 0xB3
UTF-8 Hex Bytes
F0 9F 8E B3
UTF-8 Octal Bytes
360 237 216 263
UTF-16 Hex (C Syntax)
0xD83C 0xDFB3
UTF-16 Hex
d83cdfb3
UTF-16 Dec
55356 57267
UTF-32 Hex (C Syntax)
0x0001F3B3
UTF-32 Hex
01F3B3
UTF-32 Dec
127923
Python Src
u"\U0001F3B3"
PHP Src
"\xf0\x9f\x8e\xb3"
C/C++/Java Src
"\uD83C\uDFB3"
Emoji Character Encoding Data (equivalent or similiar)
