Jiong

Jiong (Chinese: 囧; pinyin: jiǒng; Jyutping: gwing2) is a once obscure Chinese character meaning a "patterned window". Since 2008, it has become an internet phenomenon and widely used to express embarrassment and gloom because of the character's resemblance to a sad facial expression.

It has historically been used as a Chinese dictionary radical and has Shuowen Jiezi number 240, but it is not included among the Kangxi radicals, nor by the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components.

Original meanings

1. Window, according to Xu Shen's 2nd-century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi: "窻牖麗廔闓明" ('an open and light window').
2. Granary. 米囧 means "put the new rice into a granary".
3. Sacrificial place. Based on Chouli.
4. Toponym.

Internet emoticon

The character for jiong is nowadays more widely used on the Internet as an ideographic emoticon representing a range of moods, as it resembles a person's face. It is commonly used to express ideas or feelings such as annoyance, shock, embarrassment, awkwardness, etc.

The use of jiong as an emoticon can be traced to 2005 or earlier; it was referenced on 20 January 2005 in a Chinese-language article on Orz. The character is sometimes used in conjunction with orz, OTZ, or its other variants to form "囧rz", representing a person on their hands and knees (jiong forming the face, while r and z represent arms and legs, respectively) and symbolising despair or failure.

Encoding

The character is included in Unicode at U+56E7 (囧). Unicode also includes U+518F (冏), which is considered a variant.

References