Most people know the classic smiley icons, created by combining for example a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis – right parenthesis equals happy smiley, left parenthesis unhappy. These are the most traditional emoticons, expressing feelings by images instead of words in e-mails, sms texts or instant messages.
Skype offers a couple of standard smileys in animated form to click and add to a chat message. Extras like steaming coffee mug, sun, rain or a hug performed by bear help to make chatting more fun. All in all there are 72 icons to choose from.
But why not surprise friends with a few of the lesser known smileys? Just type the following words into a text messenger conversation and put them in parentheses to generate Skype's hidden icons. Warning: Some of these icons can be a bit naughtier than the standard ones.
Unusual Smileys for Skype Messenger
These emoticons represent the darker side of old smiley's character, when frustration might lead to stronger reactions – to be used carefully! Typing the word in parantheses generates the smiley described:
- (bandit) Face with balaclava
- (drunk) A drunken smiley
- (rock) A smiley making the rock / evil sign
- (smoking) A smoking smiley
- (banghead) A furious smiley banging his head against a wall
- (finger) A smiley showing his middle-finger
- (fubar) Angry smiley pointing finger at his forehead
- (swear) A swearing smiley
- (tmi) too much information – a smiley holding his hand to his face and waving aside
Human Characters to Add to a Skype Chat
These guys are having a good time – with one being rather rude:
- (toivo) A waving man and his dog
- (poolparty) Swimmer with rubber duck
- (mooning) A man dropping his pants and showing his backside
Miscellaneous – More Hidden Skype Icons
These icons might come in handy to report a bug, for instance. A few people might even want to report a squirrel! Or announce their MySpace-address:
- (bug) A black bug
- (heidy) A squirrel eating a nut
- (myspace) MySpace icon
Adding a Flag to a Skype Chat
Expressing feelings of patriotism is no problem in Skype - these serve just as examples, in alphabetical order:
- (flag:ae) Untied Arab Emirates
- (flag:au) Australia
- (flag: br) Brasil
- (flag:ca) Canada
- (flag:cn) China
- (flag:cu) Cuba
- (flag:de) Germany
- (flag:eg) Egypt
- (flag:eu) European Union
- (flag:fr) France
- (flag:hk) Hong Kong
- (flag:ie) Ireland
- (flag:id) Indonesia
- (flag:il) Israel
- (flag:iq) Iraq
- (flag:in) India
- (flag:ir Iran
- (flag:it) Italy
- (flag:jp) Japan
- (flag.lb) Lebanon
- (flag:mx) Mexico
- (flag:nz) New Zealand
- (flag:ru) Russia
- (flag:tr) Turkey
- (flag:uk) United Kingdom
- (flag:us) USA
- (flag:za) South Africa
These are just a few examples for Skype-flags – by exchanging the two letter abbreviation of the country, practically every country's flag can be generated.There even is a whole new country - after typing (flag:ss) a Skype-flag comes up. Any idea, where to find this one on a map?
All icons and emoticons presented here work with Skype version 3.0 and higher, some also with older versions.
Renate Oetjens - Renate Oetjens has been publishing on the internet for more than 14 years. After working for several German publishing houses and AOL ...
