We Italians have mastered the art of talking with our hands. We can, in theory, have whole conversations without exchanging any words, though the real purpose of our gestures is to animatedly emphasize–a proclivity that has become famous worldwide, so much so that one such gesture was added to the emoji dictionary.

Rather unfortunately, the name for the symbol is “pinched fingers”, a lackluster description for the gesture of a million meanings, known offline as “la mano a borsa”. To date, around 250 Italian hand gestures have been identified; here are just a few of the most important, as well as pointers on how to bring that misused emoji to life.