What Does Smiley Mean?
A smiley is an emoticon used to express happiness in digital communications. Smileys are often used in digital communications, emails, instant messages, or sms text messages to show joy or happiness, or in response to something funny or amusing.
Techopedia Explains Smiley
Smileys, as well as other emoticons, can be represented in several different ways. One way is with digital icons that can be selected in a particular interface. The smiley and other emoticons can also be represented using text characters.
In using text characters to create a smiley emoticon, users have two distinct choices. There is a set of raw text emoticons typically labeled 'Western’ which is different than a set of raw text emoticons that are typically labeled 'Eastern.’ In the Western set, the right-hand text character represents the mouth, with the left-hand text character representing the eyes and the middle character representing the nose. In most of these, a parenthesis on the right creates a smiling mouth. The nose can be a caret, dash or other symbol. The eyes are typically composed of a colon.