The eggplant emoji 🍆 shows a purple aubergine, but online it's mostly used as a stand-in for a penis. Emojipedia calls that its widespread use, and Dictionary.com says it was meaning 'penis' on Twitter as early as 2011. In a recipe or a farmers' market post it can still just mean the vegetable, but in a flirty text, assume innuendo.
Few emojis have drifted further from their picture than this one. It started as a simple vegetable on Japanese phones and became the internet's most famous double meaning. If you're a parent who spotted it in a group chat, a marketer about to put it in a food post, or someone who got one in a DM and isn't sure how to react, here's the full story.
What the 🍆 eggplant emoji shows
Emojipedia describes it as a long, bulbous, bright purple eggplant, or aubergine in British English, with a leafy stem. Dictionary.com notes that it's called the aubergine emoji in the UK and Japan, which is a handy reminder that the same fruit has different names depending on where you grew up.
On the technical side, Unicode lists it as U+1F346 in the food-vegetable group, sitting between avocado and potato in the official emoji-test file. Emojipedia says it was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 under the name 'Aubergine' and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. So the formal name it was born with is the British one, even though most people now search for eggplant.
How the eggplant became innuendo
Dictionary.com traces the shift step by step. It says the emoji debuted in 2010 and quickly became a symbol for the penis. It cites 'Among the New Words', a quarterly feature in the journal American Speech, which found the eggplant being used that way on Twitter as early as 2011.
From there it snowballed. Dictionary.com says a 2014 trend on Instagram and other sites called #EggplantFriday pushed the meaning further, with posts that were very much not about cooking. Its explanation for why the eggplant won, rather than a banana or cucumber, is blunt: the other long-food emojis simply looked less like the real thing. Wiktionary even lists 🍌 as a synonym for this sense.
| Year | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Approved in Unicode 6.0 under the name Aubergine | Emojipedia |
| 2011 | Used on Twitter to mean penis, recorded by American Speech | Dictionary.com |
| 2014 | #EggplantFriday trend spreads on Instagram | Dictionary.com |
| 2015 | Instagram blocks the emoji and #eggplant from search | Dictionary.com, Emojipedia |
| 2015 | Added to Emoji 1.0 | Emojipedia |
| 2016 | American Dialect Society names it Most Notable Emoji of 2015 | Dictionary.com |
The year Instagram blocked the eggplant
This is the part most people don't know. Emojipedia says the hashtag #🍆 was once banned on Instagram's search function in 2015 because of its phallic use. Dictionary.com adds that Instagram blocked the emoji and references to it, such as #eggplant, from search that year.
Then in 2016, according to Dictionary.com, the American Dialect Society named it the Most Notable Emoji of 2015, because it was used so widely as sexual innuendo. Brands noticed too. Dictionary.com quotes a September 2016 post from the condom brand Durex joking about an eggplant flavour in a post tagged #CondomEmoji. When a vegetable gets an award and a ban in the same year, you know it's not really about the vegetable any more.
Eggplant emoji combinations and what they signal
Context does a lot of the work. Dictionary.com explains that the eggplant is often paired with other emojis to spell out something sexual, most commonly the peach emoji, which is used for a bottom, and the sweat droplets emoji. If you see those together in a message, it's flirting or sexting, not a shopping list.
- 🍆 on its own in a food, recipe or gardening post: usually the vegetable.
- 🍆 in a reply to a selfie or a flirty message: almost always innuendo.
- 🍆 with 🍑 or 💦: explicit, and not something to send to a colleague or a client.
- 🍆 used as a word, as in 'eggplant', in a joke: Dictionary.com says the word itself has become a euphemism too.
If you're trying to work out whether a message is crossing a line, my guide to NSFW is a useful companion. The eggplant, like the cherry emoji, is one of those images that can be innocent or very much not, depending on who sent it and why.
Eggplant or aubergine: the word behind the picture
The vegetable's names have their own history. Wiktionary says eggplant comes from egg plus plant and was originally used only for the white, egg-shaped variety. Merriam-Webster dates the first known use of eggplant to 1767 and notes the fruit can be blackish purple or white, which explains the name a lot better than the purple version on your keyboard.
Aubergine has a much longer journey. Wiktionary traces it from French, from Catalan albergínia, from Arabic al-bāḏinjān, from Persian, and ultimately from a Sanskrit word glossed as 'the plant that cures the wind'. In India, Malaysia and Singapore you'll also hear brinjal, and in parts of the Caribbean, melongene. Same vegetable, very different words, and only one of them got turned into a joke.
A lucky dream in Japan
There's one sweet detail in Emojipedia's description. It notes that in Japan it's considered lucky to dream of an eggplant on the first night of the New Year. Emojis started on Japanese phones, so it's fitting that the picture has a cultural meaning there that has nothing to do with Twitter in 2011.
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A short guide to a different emoji sits in the two hearts emoji guide.
Should brands use the eggplant emoji?
My honest advice: only if you're literally talking about food, and even then, read the room. A restaurant posting its aubergine special with 🍆 will be fine with most followers, but expect a few jokes in the comments. Anywhere else, it's a risk. Dictionary.com points out that the emoji has become so tied to its innuendo that people use the word eggplant itself as a euphemism. If your audience includes young people, parents or professionals, a plain photo of the dish says the same thing without the snigger.
Context changes everything with emoji, and our strawberry emoji explainer looks at another case.
Related: the cooking page.
Frequently asked questions
What does the eggplant emoji mean from a girl or a guy?
In a flirty message from anyone, 🍆 usually stands for a penis. Emojipedia calls that its widespread use online.
When did the eggplant emoji come out?
Emojipedia says it was approved in Unicode 6.0 in 2010 under the name Aubergine and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.
Why did Instagram ban the eggplant emoji?
Dictionary.com and Emojipedia say Instagram blocked it from search in 2015 because of its sexual use.
What does 🍆 and 🍑 together mean?
Dictionary.com says the pairing signals sex, with the peach standing for a bottom. It's explicit.
Is it called the eggplant or aubergine emoji?
Both. Its original Unicode name was Aubergine, and Dictionary.com says it's called the aubergine emoji in the UK and Japan.
Can I use the eggplant emoji in a food post?
Yes, it can mean the vegetable, but expect some people to read it as a joke.
