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Grawlix

Grawlix

Technique used to imply swear words

Grawlix (/ˈɡrɔːlɪks/) or obscenicon is the use of typographical symbol to replace profanity. Mainly used in cartoons and comics,[1][2] it is used to get around language restrictions or censorship in publishing. At signs (@), dollar signs ($), number signs (#), ampersands (&), percent signs (%), and asterisks (*) are oft-used symbols.[3] The characters may resemble the letters they replace, such as "$" standing in for "S".[3]

Not to be confused with The Grawlix, the American comedy trio.
Grawlix in a speech bubble

History

First documented use of grawlix in 1901

The first known grawlix appeared in November 1, 1901 story of Gene Carr's comic strip Lady Bountiful, with the title "Lady Bountiful is Shocked", and continued to expand its usage throughout 1902 and 1903.[4] In December 12, 1902, The Katzenjammer Kids became the second comic to adapt grawlixes, among many other comic trends seen today.[4]

Grawlix in cartoons and comics

In 1964, American cartoonist Mort Walker popularized[lower-alpha 1] the term "grawlix" in his article Let's Get Down to Grawlixes,[1][4] which he expanded upon in his book The Lexicon of Comicana.[4]

The emoji U+1F92C 🤬 SERIOUS FACE WITH SYMBOLS COVERING MOUTH represents a face with grawlixes over the mouth. It was proposed in 2016[6] and accepted into Unicode 10.0 in 2017.

In November 2022, Merriam-Webster and Hasbro added the word to the seventh edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, citing familiarity among younger players.[7]

Etymology

A Merriam-Webster blog post suggests the word grawlix may have originated from the word growl, which is a sound a person makes when they are angry.[3]

Example

"Come this fall, CBS will debut a 7:30 p.m. sitcom starring 79-year-old William Shatner. The title is $#*! My Dad Says. The opening profanity symbols (called grawlixes) will be pronounced "bleep," but we all know what it stands for."
— Michael Storey, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 20, 2010

Notes

  1. Although Walker is often credited with having created this terminology, in 2013, comics scholar Maggie Thompson discovered that Walker was using terms invented by Charles D. Rice, in an article published in This Week and subsequently reprinted in What's Funny About That (1954). Thompson also observed that, although Walker credited these symbols to "Charlie Rice of This Week magazine" in his book Backstage at the Strips (1975), "many of us [including Thompson herself] had assumed [that this] was Mort's joke about an imaginary scholarly attribution".[5]

References

  1. [1]
    Nordquist, Richard (March 4, 2019). "What the @#$%&! Is a Grawlix?". ThoughtCo. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
  2. [2]
    Zimmer, Ben (October 9, 2013). "How Did @#$%&! Come to Represent Profanity?". Slate. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
  3. [3]
    "What the @% Is a 'Grawlix'?". Words We're Watching. Merriam-Webster. April 18, 2018.
  4. [4]
    Edwards, Phil (February 22, 2019). "How #$@!% became shorthand for cursing". Vox. Retrieved December 17, 2023.
  5. [5]
    Maggie's World 009: Research, Obsession, and Obsessive Research, by Maggie Thompson, at the San Diego Comic-Con; published September 3, 2013; retrieved May 22, 2023
  6. [6]
    Karadeniz, Tayfun (October 31, 2016). "L2/16 - 313 Emoji Faces Proposal for Unicode v10" (PDF). Unicode. Retrieved July 12, 2023.
  7. [7]
    "'Yeehaw, bae,' official Scrabble dictionary adds 500 new words". PBS NewsHour. November 16, 2022. Retrieved February 7, 2023.

Further reading

Look up grawlix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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