Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Groceries emoji

After going out for groceries last week, I went looking for a suitable emoji and found none. Though the Unicode Consortium lists countless emoji for individual foods, there’s no emoji for the stuff one buys in a grocery store, aka “groceries.” The best I could find: “shopping cart” (🛒) and “shopping bags” (🛍). But the cart is empty, and the bags, also empty, appear to come from a toney mall.

I’m surprised to find nothing for “groceries” on the Consortium’s list of proposed emoji. Though I’m not equipped to propose an emoji, a task that calls for some serious design skills, I can describe what I’d like to see: a brown paper bag, appropriately dented in two or three places, with a loaf of bread, a box (perhaps of cereal), and a head of celery jutting from the open top. A cliché, of course, the groceries people used to carry on television, though the emoji need not be in black and white. But there must be celery.

comments: 5

Fresca said...

Celery, for Bloody Marys? :)

Michael Leddy said...

Could be. But I think, really, because “groceries.” I think of the celery as a signifier, jutting from the top of the bag.

Michael Leddy said...

P.S.: I should have added :) to my comment too. Or at least to “signifier.”

Frex said...

I agree. Hi & Lois's grocery bag would have celery sticking out, for sure!
--Fresca

Michael Leddy said...

They might each have to carry a bag (six people and a dog to feed). Maybe then celery in one, vodka in the other. :)