grawlixes: random non-alphabetical characters as one word to indicate cursing (e.g. as used by cartoonists in speech bubbles).
From Michael Quinion's letter:
The word was the creation of the cartoonist Mort Walker. He first used it in 1964 in an article he wrote for the National Cartoonists Society in the US and which he then included in his 1980 book The Lexicon of Comicana, a satire on the comic devices that cartoonists use but which ironically became a textbook for art students. Other terms he invented for various comic-artist graphical conventions include waftarom, squean, spurl, neoflect, plewd, vite, dite, hite, direct-a-tron (and throwatron, sailatron, staggeratron, swishatron...), jigg, briffit, solrad, whiteope, indotherm, crottle eyed, neoflect, and three other ways to indicate maladicta — jarn, quimp, and nittle.
More at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexicon_of_Comicana
From Michael Quinion's letter:
The word was the creation of the cartoonist Mort Walker. He first used it in 1964 in an article he wrote for the National Cartoonists Society in the US and which he then included in his 1980 book The Lexicon of Comicana, a satire on the comic devices that cartoonists use but which ironically became a textbook for art students. Other terms he invented for various comic-artist graphical conventions include waftarom, squean, spurl, neoflect, plewd, vite, dite, hite, direct-a-tron (and throwatron, sailatron, staggeratron, swishatron...), jigg, briffit, solrad, whiteope, indotherm, crottle eyed, neoflect, and three other ways to indicate maladicta — jarn, quimp, and nittle.
More at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexicon_of_Comicana
