🤨 Face with Raised Eyebrow: really?, soft no, or wait what?

🤨 can sound like "really?", a soft no, a pause to think, or plain confusion — and the sentence around it does most of the work. Use the cards to test the likely read before you send it, especially when the relationship or stakes are unclear.

Emojipedia describes Face with Raised Eyebrow as conveying suspicion, skepticism, concern, consideration, disbelief, and disapproval. The emoji was approved in Unicode 10.0 in 2017 under the earlier name "Face with One Eyebrow Raised," and added to Emoji 5.0 the same year. People have likened the look to Stephen Colbert and to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's raised brow. 1

The age-and-culture note comes from a 2024 study of 523 adults in the UK and China. Participants classified 24 other emoji across four platforms; age and culture affected classification generally, so this is a caution about interpretation, not a test of 🤨 itself. 2

The combo meanings are practical editorial reads, not universal definitions. When a message carries real consequences, let the words do the explaining and let 🤨 add the doubt.