Drunk? Anaesthetised? Or just seen your bank balance? – what the new woozy emoji really means

Name: Woozy Face.

AKA: Face With Uneven Eyes and Wavy Mouth.

Age: Six days.

Appearance: Well, you know … a face with uneven eyes and a wavy mouth.

Whose face? It’s an emoji, so unless they found someone with bright yellow skin and a circular head, I doubt there was a human model.

Ah. It’s one of those playful little graphics that make text messages easy to read and really cumbersome to write. It sure is.

Of course, in the old days we used to make our own emojis. Remember 8-)? That meant being happy while wearing sunglasses. No, those were emoticons. Emojis are regulated by the Unicode Consortium, and come with the software on your phone or computer.

Processed modern rubbish. Maybe. But you can say more with them, and new batches arrive all the time. Woozy Face is one of 158 new emojis just released for iPhones and iPads.

What? Even more? I can already type a paragraph faster than I can choose an emoji. And why do we need a woozy face anyway? That’s a matter of some debate. No one can agree on what the symbol means.

“I’ve been recently anaesthetised”? That’s one suggestion. Drunkenness and unwelcome leering are also common themes.

Hmm. Twitter user @basicallylewis suggests it’s for “when all your pending transactions hit you all at once”, which we can all relate to. But that’s still not as useful as the other new ones, such as red hair, curly hair, no hair, white hair, legs, a bone, DNA …

OK, I get it. But, of course, emojis often attract controversy. Several US airports have asked for the “plane landing” to be changed, so the angle of descent would look less “crash-y”.

Airports are touchy about that kind of thing. Yeah. There was the scandal over the new lobster, which had two legs missing.

My pet lobster was furious about that. And then there was Google’s cheeseburger, which had the cheese under the burger.

Of course. But look, if the Unicode Consortium just wants to be helpful, why doesn’t it supply emojis for human genitals? That’s clearly what people want. I fear that’s unlikely. You’ll have to make do with aubergines, peaches and so on.

Oh, I’ll manage. It’s the gardeners I worry about. One quick exchange about their produce and they can wind up in a very awkward situation. Yes. It’s all about the gardeners.

Do say: “Maybe it means ‘I have lost a contact lens’.”

Don’t say: “I wonder what people will use the bone for?”