在难以进行面对面谈话的时期，许多人选择用表情符号来表达自己对大流行病的想法。但也许没有哪个表情符号能像双手合十的表情符号一样体现这个难以想象时刻的希望和恐惧。

At a time when in-person conversations are harder to come by, many people are choosing to express their thoughts about the pandemic with emojis. But perhaps no emoji has come to embody¹ the hopes and fears of this unthinkable moment as much as the folded hands emoji.

The folded hands emoji has popped up in more tweets than ever before to help express our feelings about seemingly every aspect of a health crisis that can sometimes defy words. It's used to give thanks to frontline workers, send prayers to loved ones and express gratitude² for finding toilet paper on supermarket shelves.

 

The emoji, sometimes called prayer hands, was used 25% more often in April than in August, the last time that particular character was analyzed³ by Emojipedia, which tracks trends and frequency of emoji use on Twitter. That spike⁴ made it the eighth most popular emoji for the month -- and cemented its position as a visual emblem⁵ for how we feel during the pandemic.

 

 

As coronavirus cases ticked up and lockdowns spread around the world, the way we communicate evolved quickly. Water-cooler conversations were replaced by Slack chats. Happy hours and birthday parties now unfold on Zoom⁶. Phone calls made a comeback. And people are increasingly relying on emoji to express their thoughts and gestures to an audience they can no longer see in person.

 

Nearly one in five tweets now include an emoji, up from about one in six tweets during same time last year, according to Emojipedia. Icons⁷ such as the face with a medical mask, the microbe and a bar of soap have also spiked⁸ in messages specifically associated with the coronavirus.

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