Grawlix
May 19, 2015, 6:54 pm
“Do you know what a grawlix is?” a young relative recently asked me.
“I certainly don’t, but I would like to know,” was my reply.
“Well”, he said, “it’s the name for those funny symbols cartoonists use in place of swear words.”
He and I are both hard core readers, and we were delighted to acquire this new word which he had come across in a witty young adult book he had been reading.
My curiosity piqued, I decided to find out more about the grawlix. The word was invented by Mort Walker, the cartoonist who created Beetle Bailey. In 1980 he wrote a book, The Lexicon of Comicana. Intended as a satire, the book explores the devices cartoonists use in their drawings. After researching cartoons from around the globe, Walker catalogued a set of symbols he calls “symbolia”. Then he invented quirky names for the symbols.
One day in a book store, Mort was looking for his book and couldn’t find it. He asked a salesperson for help and was told his book was in the “Language” section. He had been looking for his book under “Humor”. The joke was on him: his satirical book was taken seriously and his tongue in check names are now found in dictionaries.
Here are a few samples of his witty word inventions.
Agitrons: wiggly lines around a shaking object or character
Blurgits, swalloops: Curved lines preceding or trailing after a character’s moving limbs
Briffits: Clouds of dust that hang in the spot of a swiftly departing character or object.
Plewds: Flying sweat droplets that appear around a character’s head when working hard or stressed.
3 Comments for this entry
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Greetings and welcome...
The Suitcase Lady Blog is now in its fourteenth year. I am obviously a believer in these words from E. B. White. "We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry." Thank you for reading the writing that I delight in doing.
Posts
May 19th, 2015 on 9:19 PM
I LOVE this – this is great!! Thanks!
May 20th, 2015 on 9:40 AM
Mary
!!!
evie
May 20th, 2015 on 4:37 PM
Even when I have the freedom to cuss in an article, I love the * as in “oh sh*t” … I think it adds some panache.