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Disemvowel


Disemvoweling, disemvowelling (see doubled L), or disemvowelment of a piece of alphabetic text is rewriting it with all the vowel letters removed. This original sentence:

would, after being disemvowelled, look like this:

Disemvoweling is a common feature of SMS language.

Because disemvoweling makes text legible only through significant cognitive effort, it is used by moderators on internet forums, newsgroups and blogs as a way to limit the effectiveness of unwanted postings or comments, such as rudeness or criticism. Disemvoweling maintains some transparency, both of the act and the underlying word, which would not be the case if the entire offending post is deleted. The word disemvoweling is a portmanteau combining vowel and disembowel.

The word was used with precisely this meaning in the 1939 novel Finnegans Wake (p. 515).

A technique dubbed splat out was used by Usenet moderators to prevent flamewars, by substituting a "splat" (i.e., asterisk) for some letters, often the vowels, of highly charged words in postings. Examples include NaziN*z*, evolution*v*l*t**n, gun controlg*n c*ntr*l. "The purpose is not to make the word unrecognizable but to make it a mention rather than a use." The term "disemvoweling" —attested from 1990 — was occasionally used for the splat-out of vowels.


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