🙏: please or thank you?

At work, I started using the 🙏 emoji to reply to Slack messages. Then I realized that it might have different meanings about

• either the past: expressing thanks, appreciation, or sympathy,
• or the future: expressing a hope, wish, or request,

and maybe not everyone uses it the same way that I do.

It would be unfortunate if someone thought I was expressing gratitude for their situation when I meant to express sympathy!

Question

I surveyed various of my group chats with the following poll:

Which of the following situations do you use 🙏 emoji for?

• Indicate request (“please”)
• Indicate gratitude (“thanks”)
• Indicate hope for a future event
• Indicate sympathy or commiseration for a past event
• Other (add your own option)

Results

Situation	A1	A2	A3	B1	B2	B3	B4	C1	C2	D1	Total
Indicate request (“please”)	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	8
Indicate gratitude (“thanks”)	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	8
Indicate hope for a future event	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	8
Indicate sympathy or commiseration for a past event	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	3

---

Some take-aways:

• More commonly: request/gratitude/hope were equally (!) common.
• Less commonly: some people use it to indicate sympathy/commiseration for a past event, but one person even expressed explicit confusion about this meaning.
• Less commonly: it can have connotations of prayer. (Note that the official description is PERSON WITH FOLDED HANDS, which doesn’t specifically indicate prayer.)

This suggests that my original concern of expressing gratitude instead of sympathy is not unjustified.

Responses

Chat A (n = 3)

• Indicate request (“please”) — A1, A2
• Indicate gratitude (“thanks”) — A1, A2, A3
• Indicate hope for a future event — A1, A2, A3
• Indicate sympathy or commiseration for a past event — A2

A1:

[…] I use it for the first three

A2:

I don’t use it but if I did those all seem like situations where it’s applicable

A3:

Sometimes thanks (mostly I see it used by others and I don’t find it cringe)

If you mean it as please, it might come off as over-emphatic/passive aggressive

Hope for a future event (like “I pray”) - in a somewhat humorous context of a group chat it is entirely appropriate

I don’t get how it fits the sympathy/commiseration context

Since it has a praying connotation and because it also looks like a gesture used more by some cultures than others, I try to avoid it myself for fear of seeming insensitive/being misunderstood

Chat B (n = 4)

• Indicate request (“please”) — B1, B2, B3.
• Indicate gratitude (“thanks”) — B1, B3.
• Indicate hope for a future event — B2, B4.
• Indicate sympathy or commiseration for a past event — B1, B2
• ➕ Replacement for “care” emoji where there isn’t one — B2
• ➕ Praying — B4.

B3:

I’d use 🤞 for hope

Chat C (n = 2)

• Indicate request (“please”) — C1, C2
• Indicate gratitude (“thanks”) — C1, C2
• Indicate hope for a future event — C1, C2
• Indicate sympathy or commiseration for a past event — (none)

Chat D (n = 2)

• Indicate request (“please”) — D1
• Indicate gratitude (“thanks”) — D1
• Indicate hope for a future event — D1, D2
• Indicate sympathy or commiseration for a past event — (none)

D2:

I use it as „praying for you” […] Like if someone is having trouble with something

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