Tell me more ×
English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 70 down vote favorite
10

Is there a name for the use of symbols in place of curse words, for example #$@&%*!?

share|improve this question
54  
That's the best ☠@✴#ing question title I've ever seen. – naught101 Oct 15 '12 at 4:39
6  
Not to be outdone by the special interest groups and their pretentious little dictionaries of coined terms that they would be delighted if the rest of the world adopted (see the various answers below), I hereby propose: depletives, a portmanteau of deleted expletives. – Kaz Oct 15 '12 at 7:09
7  
Ah, maledicta. That brings me way back. When I graduated from high school, I was the maledictorian. :) – Kaz Oct 15 '12 at 7:10
2  
Another proposition: these are not exactly dirty words, but usually the order of the characters depends on a particular keyboard layout, hence we might call them qwerty words. – Kaz Oct 15 '12 at 7:13
3  
@Kaz: The order certainly disagrees with my keyboard layout. Also, I tend to arrange them "meaningfully", e.g. $#!+ – Jonas Oct 15 '12 at 14:54
show 4 more comments

6 Answers

up vote 55 down vote accepted

I found the term "grawlixes" here: The Lexicon of Comicana.

Grawlixes
Typographical symbols standing for profanities, appearing in dialogue balloons in place of actual dialogue.

I also came across the terms "profanitype" and "symbol swearing." I think I like "grawlixes" best.

share|improve this answer
4  
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SymbolSwearing also uses "graxlixes", and also "profanitype". – naught101 Oct 15 '12 at 5:33
8  
@naught101 Oh for grawlixes' sake, don't link to tvtropes. There goes my evening... – Tobias Kienzler Oct 15 '12 at 18:07
Grawlix won't work. Just Google it and you'll see why. Profanitype works but sounds and looks too much like stereotype, even though "-type" is supposed to relate to typewriting. Zairja has the answer(s): Bleep is not a name for !@#$%^&* but rather a spoken equivalent of it, as is blankety-blank (my substantive contribution to this thread). The winner, so far: Obscenicon. (Good going, Zairja!) – H Stephen Straight Oct 17 '12 at 0:04
2  
@HStephenStraight Can you elaborate on why Grawlix won't work? I didn't find any google hit that did not confirm this. Although the meaning of Obscenicon is probably easier to guess without prior knowledge... – Tobias Kienzler Oct 20 '12 at 12:34
up vote 31 down vote

These have also been called obscenicons. Several links on Language Log offer an in-depth look at their usage.

More on the early days of obscenicons
Obscenicons a century ago
CALL ME... UNPRONOUNCEABLE

The "word" represented by the symbols could be pronounced bleep:

So people came up with a small set of conventional euphemistic readings for <expletive suppressed>: "bleep", "bleeping", "bleepity-bleep", "blankety-blank", and so on. Of these, "bleep" seems to have pretty much won out, as (again) Geoff noted in his first posting. And, indeed, the IMDB lists the movie What the #$! Do We Know!?* as What the Bleep Do We Know!? So there now is a conventional way for pronouncing the name of the movie.

You might refer to such symbols as "bleeps" though YMMV.

share|improve this answer
up vote 12 down vote

These can also be called swear symbols or curse symbols, as evidenced by this quote:

But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.
(Daniel Clowes, Cartoonist)

Those terms are not as cool as the word grawlix, but they are still in the vernacular, and thus worthy of a mention.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Redactions? It would be more typical to use a verb — such as saying that the swear words had been censored or redacted.

share|improve this answer
2  
That would usually imply something more like blacking out, or crossing off. – naught101 Oct 15 '12 at 22:50
up vote 1 down vote

I've always known it as symbolic substitution — but have no idea where I learned the phrase. Interestingly enough, the English language contains more descriptive words than any other language — completely negating the need for symbolic substitution in the first place.

Another word I've seen used for it is symtax, but I prefer symbolic substitution because it is self explanatory by definition.

share|improve this answer
7  
Citation needed for "the English language contains more descriptive words than any other language". What is a "descriptive word" anyway? – RegDwighт♦ Oct 15 '12 at 9:10
up vote 3 down vote

I've always heard and referred to this as "comic cursing" in the US Northeast, but I can't find a citation and also haven't discussed this particular topic very often.

share|improve this answer

protected by RegDwighт♦ Oct 15 '12 at 15:59

This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.