In recent years, many Russian resources can be read that we, it turns out, incorrectly interpreted a popular symbol, perceiving it as palms folded in a prayer gesture. We checked whether an alternative interpretation of this symbol really corresponds to its initial meaning.

The revelation that it is more correct to look at a popular symbol at a slightly different angle from time to time appears in social networks Over the past years, each time causing a great stir and disputes in the spirit "Perennic forces and stupids". On a number of well -known resources, the news is found in the form demotivator. Disputes about the interpretation of the gesture in the West are popular, where they were dedicated to even Teleports.

Emoji (from the Japanese “e” - “picture” and “modzi” - “sign”) continue to conquer the world. Without these graphic elements, which at one time the result of the development of the ideas of ordinary emoticons, today it is difficult to imagine communication on forums, in social networks or simply in personal correspondence.

One of these popular elements is the Bolded Hands gesture, which is in Unicode, the main international standard for coding, corresponds Code U+1F64F. This emoji on the main world platforms since 2018 looks quite like - adjusted for skin color, which in some cases can be chosen by yourself:

Nevertheless, one of the presented drawings can be made of a clear conclusion - each can depict the palms of both one and two different people (although then it would be more logical to make, for example, sleeves of different colors). Moreover, individual cases of using this emoji in the meaning of “give five” are also found on the pages of rather influential organizations, such as the “UN-female”:

Or basketball club "Phoenix Sans":

And although there are enough cases of such ones in comparison with the contextual popularity of a “prayer” gesture, which implies a request for people, higher forces or gratitude, only a historical review will be able to judge us. After all, the vast majority may be mistaken.

Many people first encountered a phenomenon called Emoji in 2008 on iPhones with the operating system iPhone OS 2.2. The version of the “folded hands” presented there included the image of either the radiance emanating from the palms, or strong cotton. The second interpretation, apparently, gave rise to the version of "give five." However, let's compare this emoji with his predecessors from other sets (SoftBank 2000, KDDI Type D-1), published in 2000 and 2003, respectively:

The left emoji is very reminiscent of the iPhone (and does not include the bowl of the scales in favor of cotton), while the right clearly depicts a person who folded his palms in prayer. Thus, long before the first “controversial” emoji on iPhones, at least part of the developers interpreted the future popular symbol precisely as “folded hands”, and it is difficult to draw an unequivocal conclusion from the designed design. We add that SoftBank, like the word “emoji”, is Japanese, and it was its sets of symbols prototype Apple's future emoji, since in those years the iPhone was an exclusive phone of the SoftBank mobile operator. The sets of Google, Microsoft and Samsung, which have been released in a few years, seem to leave no reason for a different interpretation:

Since we mentioned Japan as the homeland of Emoji, it should be noted that in this country the gesture depicted above is traditionally produced before meals and is accompanied by a phrase "Itadakimas", literally meaning "I humbly accept." This is an analogue of our "pleasant appetite."

There is another argument - anatomical. As a rule, with a gesture “give five” cotton is produced by the main working hand, that is, in most cases - the right. If you attach two right hands with your palms to each other, then the fingers of the same name will be from different sides. Therefore, those options for our emoji, where the silhouette of the fingers clearly loomed, should not have been absolutely symmetrical.

And although, for example, by its graphic solution in a relatively less famous set Emojidex (2016) The designers seem to have decided to raise a degree of disputes, we can state that all the main facts say one thing: the original meaning of Emoji “folded hands” is precisely a request or prayer, but today we are dealing with interpretations that, of course, cannot be prohibited.