Grawlix

Description

Grawlix is the use of typographical symbols to replace profanity. Mainly used in cartoons and comics, it has been described as the graphical equivalent of a bleep censor.

Grawlixes typically use "unpronounceable" characters that might be found on a typewriter or computer keyboard, including at signs (@), dollar signs ($), number signs (#), ampersands (&), percent signs (%), and asterisks (*). They may also feature other unusual shapes such as spirals. These characters may resemble the letters they replace, such as "$" standing in for "S".

History

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": the cartoon depicts two children arguing, with one of their speech bubbles simply containing the characters "!*!-!-" followed by a spiral with a line around it and a series of lines around a dot. The character of Lady Bountiful objects to "such language".

The grawlix continued to expand its usage throughout 1902 and 1903. In December 12, 1902, The Katzenjammer Kids became the second comic to adopt them. In 1964, American cartoonist Mort Walker popularized the term "grawlix" in his article Let's Get Down to Grawlixes, which he expanded upon in his book The Lexicon of Comicana.

The emoji represents a face with grawlixes over the mouth. It was proposed in 2016 and accepted into Unicode 10.0 in 2017.

In dictionaries

In June 2018, the word grawlix was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. 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. In March 2025, the word grawlix was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Etymology

A Merriam-Webster blog post states that the word grawlix was coined by cartoonist Mort Walker (creator of the comic strip Beetle Bailey) and may have originated from the word growl, which is a sound a person makes when they are angry. Walker coined several words related to comic strip art, although he attributed the coinage of "grawlix" to Charles D. Rice of This Week magazine in Walker's book Backstage at the Strips.

Notes

References

References

1. (March 4, 2019). "What the @#$%&! Is a Grawlix?".
2. (October 9, 2013). "How Did @#$%&! Come to Represent Profanity?".
3. (April 18, 2018). "What the #@*% Is a 'Grawlix'?".
4. [https://www.comic-con.org/toucan/maggies-world-009-research-obsession-and-obsessive-research 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
5. (October 31, 2016). "L2/16 - 313 Emoji Faces Proposal for Unicode v10". Unicode.
6. "GRAWLIX Definition & Meaning".
7. (November 16, 2022). "'Yeehaw, bae,' official Scrabble dictionary adds 500 new words".
8. "grawlix, n. meanings, etymology and more".