Emoji is a small digital image or icon used in electronic communication. It is also mentioned as a standardized emoticon (emotion + icon) but emojis are usually depicted as pictographs and emoticons are depicted as characters.
Etymology of emoji:
From Japanese 絵文字 emoji (emoji, emoticon), from 絵 e (picture) + 文字 moji (character) [Wiktionary]
Wikipedia mentions the creation year of the first emoji:
The first emoji was created in 1998 or 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita, who was part of the team working on NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet platform.
But I'm asking when the term "emoji" first used in English language? When it entered technical jargon, did it enter English also? Or did it enter after it was used in Japan for a while?
♥