🥥 Coconut

🥥

🥥 Meaning and usage

Originally and literally, the emoji 🥥 means tropical coconut .

In direct context:

🥥 Food and Drink: When talking about food, especially tropical food, coconut milkshakes, desserts, curries, etc.

"Cooking Thai Tom Kha Soup 🥥"
"I drank fresh coconut juice on the beach 🥥 - it was incredible!"

🥥 Vacation and travel: Symbolizes vacation, tropical islands, beach, summer.

"Dreaming of Hawaii 🏝️🥥"

🥥 Healthy lifestyle: Coconut is associated with naturalness, healthy fats, and superfoods.

"Switched to coconut milk 🥥, it's a great substitute for cow's milk."

Slang and metaphorical meaning

This is the most interesting part. In internet culture and slang, 🥥 has acquired two distinct figurative meanings:

🥥 "Coconut" as a head

The idiom "use your coconut" in English means "use your brain," "think with your head." The emoji 🥥 fits perfectly into this context.

Designation of head, mind, thoughts:

"My head is a mess after this lecture."

"I need to cleanse 🥥 and rest."

Mind-blowing state: When information is too complex or unexpected.

"My 🥥 is about to explode from this news." 💥

Stupidity or forgetfulness: When someone has acted foolishly.

"I left my keys at home again, here I am 🥥!"

🥥 "Coconut" in a romantic context

This meaning comes from slang, where "coconut" is used to describe a person's racial attractiveness, but in a very specific way.

"Coconut": Slang term describing a person with dark skin (brown on the outside) but with preferences or behaviors characteristic of white culture (white on the inside). Similar terms include "banana" (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) and "oreo" (black on the outside, white on the inside).
Using 🥥 in this context is often humorous or self-deprecating, but can also be offensive, depending on the context. It's used to describe someone who, for example, was born in one country but has completely assimilated into the culture of another.

"I love tea and queues so much that I feel like a real 🥥" (a joke from a person of Asian descent living in the UK).

How the emoji 🥥 came to be

The emoji 🥥 was approved as part of the Unicode 8.0 standard in June 2015. The same update also introduced other popular emojis, such as the taco 🌮, the unicorn 🦄, and the face with raised eyebrow 🤨.

Its addition was part of a general trend to expand the list of emoji representing food, plants, and animals to make the set more diverse and representative of different cultures.

Interesting facts

Cultural double: In Malaysia and Indonesia, there's a popular urban myth about a "coconut vampire"—a supernatural creature (Pontianak) that drinks coconut milk rather than blood. So, in certain contexts, 🥥 can have a mystical connotation.
Emoji Riddle: The combination 🥥 + 📅 (or 🗓️) is used to represent Coconut Cake Day , celebrated on June 13th. It's an unofficial holiday created on social media for dessert lovers.
Alternative to "brain": Before the advent of specialized emoji (like 🧠 for science topics), 🥥 was one of the main replacements for the head and thoughts.
Versatility: This emoji is a great example of how a simple pictogram can evolve into a complex cultural symbol, combining literal meaning with rich metaphorical and slang layers.