Word.ws English Dictionary

Bat-embargo

Bat-embargo proper noun: a prohibition against having the same fictional characters appearing in multiple DC Comics animated series in the decade of the 2000s, which caused Batman's allies and enemies save for Batman himself to be unavailable for the animated series Justice League (although Joker, Clayface and Firefly made appearances in this show) and Justice League Unlimited, and Robin to be unavailable for animated series other than Teen Titans.

Proper noun

the Bat-embargo

  1. (slang) A prohibition against having the same fictional characters appearing in multiple DC Comics animated series in the decade of the 2000s, which caused Batman's allies and enemies save for Batman himself to be unavailable for the animated series Justice League (although Joker, Clayface and Firefly made appearances in this show) and Justice League Unlimited, and Robin to be unavailable for animated series other than Teen Titans.
    • Since certain characters are currently exclusive to The Batman, and therefore off-limits for JLU (not to mention Teen Titans--man, the Batman family is getting pretty spread out), I was wondering if any of those characters could appear in the Justice League Unlimited comic?2005 August 4, Richmond, “Does the bat-embargo extend to JLU comics?”, in rec.arts.comics.dc.universe (Usenet), message-ID <mCiIe.158498$HI.30430@edtnps84>
    • But Robin is currently occupied in Teen Titans and I think this is a side effect of the Bat embargo affecting the DCU shows (No Bat-villains in the JLU any more for example).2005 October 14, Brian Doyle, “Batman villains Q”, in rec.toys.action-figures.discuss (Usenet), message-ID <434FEA9D.5C6C8C54@nyc.rr.com>

Origin of Bat-embargo

From Bat- + embargo, reflecting a morphologic pattern established earlier by such terms as bat-phone and Bat-Signal.

Questions about Bat-embargo

What does Bat-embargo mean?
Bat-embargo means a prohibition against having the same fictional characters appearing in multiple DC Comics animated series in the decade of the 2000s, which caused Batman's allies and enemies save for Batman himself to be unavailable for the animated series Justice League (although Joker, Clayface and Firefly made appearances in this show) and Justice League Unlimited, and Robin to be unavailable for animated series other than Teen Titans.
What part of speech is Bat-embargo?
Bat-embargo is a proper noun.

Words near Bat-embargo in the dictionary

  1. bat's wings
  2. bat-
  3. bat-crap
  4. bat-eared fox
  5. bat-eared foxes
  6. Bat-embargo
  7. bat-fowler
  8. bat-fowlers
  9. bat-fowling
  10. bat-horse
  11. bat-horses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Bat-embargo (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Bat-embargo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bat-embargo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.