The sick emoji is 🤒 Face with Thermometer, a flushed face with a thermometer in its mouth. It means you are physically ill — fever, flu, cold — or feeling too rough to function. In texts it also softly cancels plans without an outright no.
Face with Thermometer
Sick Emoji 🤒
Face with Thermometer — the "I'm ill, don't expect a reply" face (and the polite way to cancel plans)
🤒 is the standard "I'm unwell" face: it signals a body problem, not an emotion. That separates it from 🤢, which is disgust or nausea, and 😷, which is masked-up or protective. Because it looks pitiable rather than gross, 🤒 has become the socially acceptable way to withdraw from something — work, a date, a group chat — while asking for a little sympathy.
✍️ Written & reviewed against real usage · verified Unicode 16.0
Tap to copy · pastes in WhatsApp, Instagram, anywhere
Sick emojis to copy & paste
These are the real emoji characters — tap one to copy it, then paste anywhere. Because they’re text, they show up as emoji wherever you send them.
Sick & related emojis
Sick combos
What the sick emoji means
🤒 reads as literal illness roughly 80% of the time: fever, flu, food poisoning aftermath, a brutal hangover reframed as a "bug." The other 20% is social. Dropped at the end of "can we move tomorrow to next week 🤒", it converts a cancellation into something nobody can argue with — the emoji does the apologising. Gen Z also uses it hyperbolically for non-medical suffering: a bad grade, a 6am shift, a spoiler, a phone bill. Millennials tend to use it straight and literally. It is not the slang "sick" meaning cool or impressive — nobody sends 🤒 to mean "that's sick, bro"; that's 🔥 or 😮💨 territory. And it carries no flirt charge at all, which is exactly why it works as a plausible exit.
💬
iMessage & WhatsApp
Used as the sign-off on a cancellation or a slow-reply warning. Pairs with a concrete reschedule to stay credible; without one it reads as a polite no.
🎵
TikTok
Captions hyperbolic suffering — 'POV: your ex liked your story 🤒'. The illness is emotional, and everyone in the comments knows it.
👻
Snapchat
Sent on a low-effort selfie in bed to explain the face and pre-empt questions. Keeps the streak alive while opting out of conversation.
💼
Work chats
Softens a sick-day message in Slack or Teams. Fine with peers and most managers; drop it in formal HR emails, where plain text reads more serious.
💘
Dating apps
Almost always genuine — 🤒 has zero flirt value, so it's the honest reschedule. Add a specific new day or the match assumes you've lost interest.
See it in real chats
How 🤒 actually lands in a chat
hey are we still on for tomorrow 8pm?
can we push it? woke up with a fever 🤒 free thursday same time?
ofc, rest up. thursday's locked in 🫂
legend. bringing my full personality on thursday, promise
Q. What does 🤒 mean from a girl or guy?
When a girl sends 🤒 she is almost always telling you the truth about being ill — and usually adding a request: check on me, don't be annoyed, lower your expectations of my replies. If it lands right after you suggested meeting up, read it as a genuine reschedule, not a brush-off, provided she names a new time. If she uses 🤒 with no follow-up and then posts elsewhere, it's a soft decline dressed politely. The correct reply is care, not interrogation: "rest, text me when you're up" outperforms "are you sure?" every time.
🤒 vs 🤢 — illness or disgust?
Face with Thermometer 🤒 and Nauseated Face 🤢 look closely related and get swapped constantly, but they land differently in a message. Here is what separates them, so you send the one you actually mean.
🤒
Face with Thermometer
A body state. Fever, flu, too unwell to show up. Invites sympathy and lowers expectations of you — it never insults the person you're talking to.
vs
🤢
Nauseated Face
A reaction. Queasiness, or revulsion at something specific — a food, a take, a photo. Pointed outward, it can read as an insult, which 🤒 never does.
How 🤒 looks on every platform
It’s the same character everywhere — each platform just draws it in its own style. Here are three open emoji sets side by side, plus how your own device renders it:
🤒
Your device
Twitter / X
Google (Noto)
OpenMoji
Platform
How it differs
Apple
Pale green-tinted face with flushed cheeks and a white thermometer angled from the mouth — the clearest 'fever' read of any design.
Google
Yellow face, red cheeks, thermometer with a red bulb. Less green tint, so it reads more 'temperature' than 'queasy'.
Samsung
Rounder face with a heavier flush and a thicker thermometer; at small sizes the thermometer can look like a straw or cigarette.
Microsoft
Flat, high-contrast Fluent style with a bright red thermometer tip — very legible in Teams at small sizes.
WhatsApp
Close to Apple's, slightly greener overall, which nudges the meaning toward nausea for some readers.
Twitter
Twemoji shows a simplified face with a short thermometer; on a phone timeline it's easy to mistake for 🤢 at a glance.
Apple, Samsung and WhatsApp draw their own proprietary versions, which we don’t redistribute — the notes above describe how they differ. Open sets shown under their licences: Twemoji (CC-BY 4.0), Noto Emoji (Apache 2.0), OpenMoji (CC BY-SA 4.0).
When 🤒 backfires
The sick emoji 🤒 is not always read the way you intend it. These three situations change what 🤒 signals, and knowing them keeps you from sending the wrong message.
It does not mean 'sick' as in cool or impressive. That slang sense never migrated to this emoji — sending 🤒 after someone's highlight reel reads as confusion, not praise.
Repeat use kills it. If 🤒 has cancelled your last three plans, the recipient stops reading it as illness and starts reading it as avoidance, whether or not you're actually ill.
At thumbnail size on Twitter and some Android skins it's easily confused with 🤢 Nauseated Face, flipping 'I have a fever' into 'you disgust me'.
In formal or medical contexts — HR emails, a doctor's portal, an insurance claim — it undercuts you. Plain language reads as serious; the emoji reads as casual.
Sent in reply to someone else's bad news it can land as mockery, as if you're mimicking their suffering. Use 🫂 or plain words instead.
Frequently asked
Quick answers to what people ask most about the sick emoji 🤒 — what it means in a text, who tends to send it, and how to copy it onto your own keyboard.
What does 🤒 mean in a text?
🤒 means the sender is physically unwell — fever, flu or a heavy cold. In texts it also functions as a soft cancellation, letting someone postpone plans or warn you they'll reply slowly without having to say no outright.
What's the difference between 🤒 and 🤢?
🤒 Face with Thermometer means illness or fever — a body problem. 🤢 Nauseated Face means queasiness or disgust, and is often aimed at something external, like bad food or a cringe opinion. Only 🤒 reliably reads as 'I'm sick'.
Does 🤒 mean 'sick' as in cool?
No. The slang sense of sick meaning awesome or impressive never attached to this emoji. 🤒 is read literally as illness on every platform. For the compliment sense, people use 🔥, 💯 or 😮💨 instead.
What does it mean when a girl sends 🤒?
Usually literal illness plus a quiet request for sympathy and patience with slow replies. If it follows a plan you suggested and she names a new day, it's a genuine reschedule. No new day offered is a polite decline.
Is 🤒 rude to send to your boss?
Not in most workplaces. In Slack or Teams it softens a sick-day message and reads as normal. Keep it out of formal HR emails, doctor's notes or anything that may be filed, where plain text carries more weight.
How do I copy the sick emoji?
Tap or click the 🤒 glyph on this page to copy it to your clipboard, then paste it anywhere. On a phone keyboard, search 'sick', 'fever' or 'ill'; on Windows press Win + period and type sick.
What is 🤒 called officially?
Its official Unicode name is Face with Thermometer, encoded at U+1F912 and approved in Unicode 8.0 in 2015. Its common shortcode is :face_with_thermometer:. Most people simply call it the sick emoji or fever emoji.
Related emoji guides
If 🤒 came up in a conversation, these are the emoji people most often look up next — each one explained the same way, with meanings you can actually use and characters you can copy.
