Grawlix (), also known as obscenicon, is a combination of various

typographical symbol Typographical symbols and punctuation marks are marks and symbols used in typography with a variety of purposes such as to help with legibility and accessibility, or to identify special cases. This list gives those most commonly encountered with L ...

s or other unpronounceable characters that replaces a

profanity Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rud ...

. It is mainly used in cartoons and comics. It is used to get around language restrictions or censorship in publishing. At signs (@),

dollar sign The dollar sign, also known as peso sign, is a symbol consisting of a capital " S" crossed with one or two vertical strokes ($ or ), used to indicate the unit of various currencies around the world, including most currencies denominated "pes ...

s ($), pound signs (#),

ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter that ...

s (&),

percent sign The percent sign (sometimes per cent sign in British English) is the symbol used to indicate a percentage, a number or ratio as a fraction of 100. Related signs include the permille (per thousand) sign and the permyriad (per ten thousand) s ...

s (%), and

asterisk The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

s (*) are symbols that are often included in a grawlix.

History

The usage of grawlix can be seen as far back as November 1, 1901, where it appeared in a ''Lady Bountiful'' comic. In ''Lady Bountiful'', grawlixes expanded in usage in 1902 to 1903. However, most of the other cartoons were yet to use this new feature. Cartoons such as ''

The Katzenjammer Kids ''The Katzenjammer Kids'' is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949). In 1964, an American cartoonist

Mort Walker Addison Morton Walker (September 3, 1923 – January 27, 2018) was an American comic strip writer, best known for creating the newspaper comic strips ''Beetle Bailey'' in 1950 and ''Hi and Lois'' in 1954. He signed Addison to some of his strips. ...

coined the term "grawlix" when he published it in his article ''Let's Get Down to Grawlixes''. He elaborated on this further in his book ''

The Lexicon of Comicana ''The Lexicon of Comicana'' is a 1980 book by the American cartoonist Mort Walker. It was intended as a tongue-in-cheek look at the devices used by comics cartoonists. In it, Walker invented an international set of symbols called ''symbolia'' a ...

''.

Etymology

According to the

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...

post, the word ''grawlix'' may have come from the word ''growl'', which is a sound a person makes when they are angry.

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'', 20 July 2010

References

{{Profanity

Comics {{Cat main, Comics Comics are an art form using a single image or a series of static images in fixed sequence. Cartoons and comic strips are often printed in newspapers, while comic books are generally published as individual documents. Webcomi ...

Profanity Typographical symbols Censorship Cartooning Symbolism Comics terminology