Tired of expressing your love for tacos and eye-rolling sarcasm in text? Unicode this week announced a new set of symbols, including 41 emojis.
Fresh characters like nerd face, hot dog, popcorn, volleyball, unicorn face, crab, and prayer beads are ready for any mobile operating system that wants to use them.
"Once phones and computers support these characters, people will be able to see colorful images such as the bottle with popping cork," a Unicode blog post said.
Neither Apple nor Google immediately responded to PCMag's request for comment on whether they will add the new emojis.
A full list of additions—including thinking face, hugging face, zodiac signs, religious symbols, burrito, volleyball, and table tennis paddle and ball—can be found online.
If you're really interested in the inner workings of emojis, check out the first version of Unicode Technical Report #51, Unicode Emoji, edited by Apple software engineer Peter Edberg and Unicode President Mark Davis. The document provides design guidelines for improving emoji interoperability across platforms, as well as background about the symbols and details about how they are selected for inclusion in the Unicode Standard.
Apple released a new lineup of racially diverse characters to developers in February, which made their public debut in April when Cupertino updated its OS X and iOS platforms.
Emojis, in fact, are taking over the world: According to a recent report by mobile keyboard app SwiftKey, more than one billion icons are used by global speakers of 16 languages. The same report suggested U.S. users opt for a random assortment of symbols, including skulls, birthday cake, fire, tech, LGBT, meat, and female-oriented emoji. Still, most people prefer the classics: smiley faces and red hearts.
Instagram also studied the growing use of emoji on the social network, suggesting that Finnish photographers use the characters in more than 60 percent of Instagram text—be it captions or comments. France, the U.K., Germany, and Italy round out the top five; the U.S. lands at No. 9 of 14 countries.
Meanwhile, British digital banking software maker Intelligent Environments this week launched what it calls the "world's first emoji-only passcode[s]," promising more security than traditional PIN codes.
Do you speak emoji? Take our quiz and find out.