Emoji dictionary
🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emoji
[pee-puhl hohl-ding handz ih-moh-jee]
What does 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emoji mean?
The people holding hands emoji (🧑🤝🧑) depicts two gender-unspecified people holding hands.
It can be a gender-inclusive representation of romantic involvement or a symbol of cooperation and community.
Where does 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emoji come from?
Unicode 6.0 in 2010 approved 👫 woman and man holding hands, 👭 women holding hands, and 👬 men holding hands emoji. In 2019, Unicode added people holding hands as a more gender-inclusive option as well as enabled all skin-tone variations for the hand-holders therein. It is composed of a sequence of the 🧑 adult, 🤝 handshake, and 🧑 adult emoji.
The default emoji features two yellow, gender-unspecified people holding hands as they stand upright. Twitter’s implementation as of April 2019, however, is identical to its woman and man holding hands emoji.
Screenshot from Emojipedia
The update, becoming available on devices throughout 2019, was widely hailed as a positive act of social representation and inclusivity.
It's true, multiracial couple emojis will be available later this year!!✨ Expands on the existing 👭 Women Holding Hands 👫 Woman & Man Holding Hands 👬 Men Holding Hands plus a 🆕 emoji: People Holding Hands 🧑🤝🧑 for those of you who's hair exists somewhere in between 😅 pic.twitter.com/IxAi0zUnig
— Jennifer Daniel (@jenniferdaniel) March 11, 2019
All otter jokes aside, these (and the man-man/woman-woman/gender neutral couples) are the emoji I’m most excited for in Unicode 12!!
Emoji should look like the real 🌍. It doesn’t matter how many cute animals you have if you don’t represent a diversity of races and genders.
— Monica Dinculescu (@notwaldorf) February 6, 2019
Examples of 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emoji
Who uses 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emoji?
Prior to implementation of people holding hands, people have used its constituent sequence of 🧑 adult, 🤝 handshake, and 🧑 adult to indicate teamwork and cooperation, as the handshake doesn’t suggest the same romantic involvement as hand-holding emoji.
#Teamwork makes the #smallbiz dream work. Get to know your employees better with these 6️⃣ entertaining activities. 🧑🤝🧑 https://t.co/Jfo4fK8q7e
— Google Small Biz (@GoogleSmallBiz) March 13, 2019
Flag Credit Union. We build 🧑🤝🧑, not 🏛️. #TallahasseeProud #850Strong pic.twitter.com/q0bZQgruQc
— Flag Credit Union (@FlagCreditUnion) February 18, 2019
Upon further rollout of people holding hands emoji in 2019, expect it to be used for a variety of non-cisgender couples and relationships along with other, non-romantic senses of human community.
It's St Valentine's day! 💘
In what way has #space played a role in your relationship/s with your special someone? 🧑🤝🧑
— People of Space: Christoph (@People_Of_Space) February 13, 2019
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands 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 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emoji that will help our users expand their word mastery.