A smiling face drawn as a simple picture using characters or dots (like :)) ), or someone who smiles frequently.
From 'smile' plus -y (like or resembling). The emoticon meaning became popular with computers and texting in the 1980s-2000s.
The smiley face emoticon :) might be the most important punctuation mark of our time—it lets people know you're joking in text when tone can't come through, preventing countless misunderstandings!
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