Breastfeeding, T-Rex highlight proposed shortlist of 51 emoji set to debut in 2017

The Unicode Consortium on Thursday announced an updated shortlist of 51 new emoji characters that could see release next year as part of Unicode 10, with additions ranging from familiar yellow faces to animals and various food items.

Today's proposal from the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (PDF link) is a more complete representation of the character set scheduled for introduction wth Unicode 10. The consortium in May published a provisional list of eight prior emoji candidates, including "Face With One Eyebrow Raised" or "Colbert emoji," all of which are included in the most recent lineup.

Highlighting the new additions are "Breastfeeding" and two dinosaurs — "T-Rex" and "Sauropod" — while other examples include "Person with Headscarf," "Mage," "Elf," "Genie," "Zombie," "Brain," "Pretzel," "Canned Food" and "Bearded Person." Foodies were also considered, as food section proposals include "Coconut," "Broccoli" and "Cut of Meat," among others.

As for faces, emoji users are likely to see "Face with Finger Covering Closed Lips," "Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes and Hand Covering Mouth" and "Grinning Face with Crazy Eyes" debut next year. Other future hits include "Face with Open Mouth Vomiting" and "Shocked Face with Exploding Head."

The Unicode Consortium says a final emoji list will be released alongside Unicode 10 in mid-2017.

Apple is traditionally one of the first smartphone platform stewards to incorporate Unicode's latest emoji library in public release, and has in the past made recommendations to expand the standard. Most recently, the company integrated full Unicode 9.0 emoji support in its latest iOS 10.2 beta, suggesting iPhone and iPad users will soon gain access to the character library.