The Pinched Fingers Emoji’s Creator Explains Its Meaning

Here’s how the most popular new addition to the Unicode was conceived. Its origin has nothing to do with fisting.

Illustration: Tessa Modi

At a journalism conference a few years ago, Jennifer 8. Lee, vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, was intrigued by a hand gesture her friend kept making. Adriano Farano, an Italian media entrepreneur deep in discussion about limoncello, kept pinching his fingers together and moving his hand up and down.

He explained to Lee that it means “What do you want?” in English — “Ma che vuò?” in Italian. It’s one of the most common hand gestures that Italians make when communicating nonverbally, according to Farano.

But despite its ubiquity, there was no way to communicate that hand gesture in emoji. So, Lee, Farano, and an Oakland-based filmmaker, writer, and emoji creator Theo Schear (famous for creating the juice box emoji) submitted a 14-page proposal to the Unicode Consortium in April 2019. On Wednesday, the consortium announced that a new pinched fingers/”What do you want?” emoji — together with 100 other new ones — will officially roll out in March as part of Unicode 13.0.

The emoji is a profile view of a hand turned palm-up, with its fingers pinched to a triangular point. After…