Jiong (Chinese: 囧; variant: 冏; Hanyu Pinyin: jiong3; Jyutping: gwing2) is a Chinese character originally meaning a "patterned window", "as bright as the light peering from outside the window", or simply "brightness". The character is now rarely used in this sense.
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The character for "Jiong" is nowadays more widely used on the Internet as an ideographic emoticon representing a range of moods, as it resembles a person's face. It is commonly used to express ideas or feelings such as annoyance, shock, embarrassment, awkwardness, scorn, response to silliness or the internet meme "DO NOT WANT".
The use of Jiong as an emoticon can be traced to 2005 or earlier; it was referenced on 20 January 2005 in a Chinese-language article on orz.[1] The character is sometimes used in conjunction with orz, OTZ or its other variants to form "囧rz", representing a person on their hands and knees (Jiong forming the face, while r and z represent arms and legs respectively) and symbolising despair or failure.
Since 2007, the Jiong character has been widely used in countries that speak Chinese, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, but also used occasionally in languages that implement Chinese characters, such as Japanese and Korean, as well as others that do not, including English.