Adorable animals, tasty breakfasts, and inclusiveness are the overriding themes in the 2019 crop of emojis.
The Unicode Consortium, which oversees emojis on smartphones, has introduced 59 new ones that will roll out later this year. (Technically it will be 230, once you factor in all the gender and skin variations.)
They run the gamut from serious to silly. There are emojis for guide dogs and people with hearing loss, mechanical arms, and in wheel chairs, as well as different couple combinations holding hands. There are also emojis featuring sloths, otters, juice boxes, falalfel, bandaids, banjos, and waffles. Also included: a Hindu temple, a sari, and a tuk-tuk.
While several are bound to be eagerly embraced by smartphone addicts, you’ll have to wait a while to add them to your texts. New emojis typically are introduced around the start of the fourth quarter, usually around the same time as major OS updates from Apple and Google. Some, though, are released earlier.
Last year’s batch of emoji included redheads and superheroes.
