Emoji dictionary
🐂 Ox emoji
[ oks ih-moh-jee ]
What does 🐂 Ox emoji mean?
The Ox emoji 🐂 depicts a brown ox.
The Ox emoji 🐂 is commonly used to represent various bovines, includes cows and bulls as well as sports mascots based on them (e.g., the Texas Longhorns). The emoji is frequently used to represent the Western zodiac sign of Taurus and the Chinese zodiac animal of the ox. Starting on February 12 in the Lunar New Year, 2021 is the Year of the Ox.
The Ox emoji 🐂 is also sometimes used to used represent the slang word bull (“nonsense”) and its stronger cousin, bullshit.
Where does 🐂 Ox emoji come from?
Approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010, the Ox emoji 🐂 shows a light brown or tan ox, facing left, with curved horns and a long tail.
An ox is a castrated bull used for farm work, but the Ox emoji 🐂 is applied to bovines more generally, including as a stand-in for the zodiac sign of the Taurus (bull) in Western astrology and in the Chinese zodiac (Year of the Ox). The Ox emoji 🐂 spiked in 2016 thanks to boy band One Direction’s Niall Horan, who was dating a Taurus.
If the Eggplant 
and Peach 🍑 emoji have taught us anything, it’s that people are pretty clever at adapting emoji for their own purposes. And so, because the Ox emoji 🐂 looks like a bull, people pair it with the Pile of Poo emoji 💩 to create the word bullshit. Clever.
Ever been told you can't drink if you want to lose fat?🍺🍷
Ignore the 🐂💩
Here's how you can👇https://t.co/tnmGBFWtuX pic.twitter.com/cAuyTyct1j— LDNM (@LDN_Muscle) August 7, 2016
Examples of 🐂 Ox emoji
Who uses 🐂 Ox emoji?
The Ox emoji 🐂 sees wide use on social media to express that someone is a Taurus, born roughly between April 20 to about May 21 on the Western calendar, or alongside Taurus-based horoscopes.
In this way, the Ox emoji 🐂 is frequently paired with the actual Taurus emoji ♉.
IT’S TAURUS SEASON .. S/O TO ALL MY TAURUS BABIES… I LOVE Y’ALL SM ..😭❤️🐂♉️
— ken 🦋 (@_KensThoughts) May 1, 2018
People of Chinese descent or interested in Chinese culture use the Ox emoji 🐂 to signify they were born in a Year of the Ox. Expect to see a lot of use for the emoji in 2021, as it is the Year of the Ox, around Chinese New Year.
Born in the year of the Ox, I choose to wear my Monkey face to welcome the year of the rooster 🐂🐒 #HappyChineseNewYear Study break over. pic.twitter.com/nMRkfOEwts
— peterblanco (@peterblanco) January 28, 2017
Sports teams whose mascots are the Bulls or Longhorns love the Ox emoji 🐂 on social media, using it with mascot-related slogans like #HookEm or the steer-imitating gesture, Sign of the Horns emoji 🤘.
#USF with the fam today 🐂🤘🏾‼️🏈 @Jordan_Miner1 @shamaur6 @WRHSBULLSFBALL @USFFootball #BAYMADE pic.twitter.com/J5QKrnHZa0
— Daniel Biglow (@GottiBiglow) July 30, 2016
As a so-called beast of burden, people sometimes add the Ox emoji 🐂 when describing someone as a beast or just an “excellent person,” especially in sports or music.
He's a beast 🐂 https://t.co/OiwMscnz2I
— VAWSE (@VAWSE) May 2, 2017
And, then there’s its use to signify pure bullshit:
Yall a bunch of bull shitters 🐂💩
— BLANCHARD🚦 (@BrazyBlanchh) June 21, 2015
Last but not least, people do use the Ox emoji 🐂 when literally referring to the animal, whether on the farm or at the rodeo. Yeehaw.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of 🐂 Ox emoji like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of 🐂 Ox emoji that will help our users expand their word mastery.