mojibake

mojibake
 n.— «Mojibake is a word to describe unintelligible gibberish displayed on a screen or printed on a paper when a software fails to handle encodings or fonts in the data stream. Mojibake is spelled in Japanese as “文字化け” which literally means “ghost characters” or “disguised characters.” Here, a set of ideograms “文字” means “character(s)” and an ideogram “化” means “change(d),” “transform(ed),” “haunt(ed)” or “ghost.”» —“What Is Mojibake?” by Tomohiro Kubota Tomohiro Kubota Oct. 10, 2003. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Familiar Strangers (episode #1594)

If you take up texting and social media late in life, there’s a lot to learn! A twenty-something wants advice getting her dad up to speed on memes, Instagram, and animated images. Plus, when you’re on a long road trip, what do you call...

One Hair from Nine Oxen

To describe something tiny or insignificant compared with something vast, you might reach for phrases like a drop in the ocean or a drop in the bucket. In Mandarin, there’s an equally picturesque phrase that translates as nine cows, one hair, 九 牛 一...

Recent posts