{"id":642,"date":"2008-04-03T17:25:10","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T16:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/03\/grawlix\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T13:59:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T13:59:32","slug":"grawlix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=642","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day &#8211; grawlix"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While looking through <a href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/%7Emyl\/languagelog\/archives\/003942.html\">Language Log<\/a> today, I came across the unusual words, <strong>grawlix<\/strong>, which is apparently a spiral used by cartoonists to indicate a character is swearing or cursing, along with other typographic symbols &#8211; for example @$\u00a3*&#038;%!! (Here the ampersand (@) stands in for the grawlix).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/grawlix.jpg\" width=\"630\" height=\"474\" alt=\"An illustration of the grawlix in use\" \/><br \/>\n<em>By <a rel=\"nofollow\" class=\"external text\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/94419868@N00\">Threeboy<\/a> from Richmond, Canada &#8211; <a rel=\"nofollow\" class=\"external text\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/threeboy\/16344894265\/\">Jay &amp; Trey Cartoon Swearing<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\" title=\"Creative Commons Attribution 2.0\">CC BY 2.0<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=48844951\">Link<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/grawlix\">Wiktionary<\/a>, grawlix means &#8220;A string of typographical symbols used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swearword.&#8221; It was apparently coined by American cartoonist Mort Walker.<\/p>\n<p>Walker also coined a number of other terms for symbols used in comics, including <strong>jarn<\/strong> and <strong>quimp<\/strong>, which are also used as alternative names for typographic swearing; <strong>phosphene<\/strong>, which describes the stars that form over characters&#8217; heads after they&#8217;ve been knocked out; and <strong>squean<\/strong>, which might float around a drunken character&#8217;s head.<\/p>\n<p>Grawlix dollar sign jarn asterisk hash quimp!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While looking through Language Log today, I came across the unusual words, grawlix, which is apparently a spiral used by cartoonists to indicate a character is swearing or cursing, along with other typographic symbols &#8211; for example @$\u00a3*&#038;%!! (Here the ampersand (@) stands in for the grawlix). By Threeboy from Richmond, Canada &#8211; Jay &amp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23970,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions\/23970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}