Dictionary

gyaru-moji en · NOUN

Etymology

From Japanese ギャル文字.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) A form of cryptic Japanese writing that substitutes similar-looking characters for the characters intended
   • Today, the same kind of inventiveness is seen in SMS gyarumoji ('girl-talk'), which is a mixture of Japanese syllables, numerals, emoticons, and other characters. 2009, David Crystal, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, page 136:
   • Gyarumoji (gal characters) are designed to hinder the decoding of text by those not in the know. They usually take the form of an unusual mixture of scripts (e.g. Japanese, the alphabet, Roman numerals, the Greek alphabet) with typographic, mathematical, and other symbols 2010, Nanette Gottlieb, “Technology and the writing system in Japan”, in Patrick Heinrich, Christian Galan, editors, Language Life in Japan, 5. The cell phone era:
   • In fact, newspaper accounts chronicle the rise of gyaru-moji (“girl-signs”), a “secret” texting language of symbols improvised by Japanese teenage girls. 2009, Aaron Marcus, “Advanced Interaction Modalities with Mobile Digital Content”, in Aaron Marcus, Anxo Cereijo Roibás, Riccardo Sala, editors, Mobile TV: Customizing Content and Experience, page 296:
2. (uncountable, usually) The characters or symbols used for such substitutions
   • For example, the phonetic symbol に (ni) can be written in gyaru moji as |=, I=, (=, or L= 2015, Zheng Yan, Encyclopedia of Mobile Phone Behavior, page 1437:

Forms

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