Phrases such as "beat your meat", "fairy" and "lovegun" are among the list of words banned in text messages by the Pakistani Telecommunication Authority.
On 14 November, mobile phone companies operating in the Islamic country were handed the list of words with a letter explaining that they have to block those words on their networks within seven days, or face the threat of legal action. Operators also need to submit monthly reports on the implementation of the block.
One official at a mobile operator, speaking anonymously to the AFP, said: "There are more than 1,600 words in the list including indecent language, expletives, swear words, slang etc, which have to be filtered. The filtering is not good for the system and may degrade the quality of network services -- plus it would be a great inconvenience to our subscribers if their SMS was not delivered due to the wrong choice of words."
Other highlights from the list, which was issued in English, Urdu and Punjabi and the English portion of which can be seen on the web here, include "roach", "pocket pool", "deposit", "hershey highway" and -- excellently -- "honkers".
Officials from the Pakistani Telecommunication Authority refused to comment on the ban, which doesn't appear to have been implemented at the time of writing, but Twitter has been ablaze with people mocking the move using the hashtag #ptabannedlist.
We put the list into a tag cloud generator, and here were the results. You can see a few more in the gallery below.
Edit 15:33, 24/11/2011: Clarified references to the number of words in the banned list.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/455x303/w_z/world_455x303.jpg" alt="Rude Wordle"/>
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
