Human linguistics began with pictograms. At some point, a particularly enterprising Cro-Magnon decided to dip his finger into the ashes of a smoldering fire — ouch! — and wipe it against the cave wall; thus, language was born. Soon, this new form of communication (a step up from the previous method of indecipherable grunts) began to evolve alongside the creatures that had invented it; in Asia and Mesopotamia, crude drawings of animals soon progressed into logograms and hieroglyphs, and eventually into fully realized alphabets.

Language is always moving forward; venerable institutions like Oxford and Merriam-Webster consistently update their dictionaries to include new words and turns of phrase — for example, this February’s edition of the Merrian-Webster dictionary includes “net neutrality,” “binge-watch,” and “truther”. Recently, though, a funny trend has appeared: Language is also moving backwards. Emoticons, popularized in Japan in the 1980s, use computer-generated punctuation marks to express emotions. As computing devices — specifically, smartphones — became more powerful, a more complex set of pictograms arose, called “Emojis.”

Emojis are tiny, colorful images, made to represent specific objects, emotions, or concepts. Currently, the standard Emoji library (supported on several mobile and desktop operating systems) consists of more than 1,000 different emoticons. Some of these emoticons look extremely similar, especially for those new to the concept, or for those with impaired vision. To that end, we’ve decided to put together a short Emoji dictionary, so you’ll never have to wonder exactly what the younger generation is trying to convey.

Emojis look different depending upon which platform you’re using; since iOS and Android are the most prevalent, we’ve chosen to include images for those two. Visit Emojipedia for a full list of Emojis by platform (links located at the bottom).