Word.ws English Dictionary

Scunthorpe problem

Scunthorpe problem noun: the unintentional blocking of harmless online content, such as emails, searches or accounts, by profanity filters or spam detectors, due to a substring resembling an obscene word.

Noun

the Scunthorpe problem

  1. The unintentional blocking of harmless online content, such as emails, searches or accounts, by profanity filters or spam detectors, due to a substring resembling an obscene word.

Origin of Scunthorpe problem

Named after the erroneous censorship of the word Scunthorpe, an English town, by the Internet service AOL, because it contained the substring cunt, resulting in most auto-censors rewriting it as S****horpe.

Questions about Scunthorpe problem

What does Scunthorpe problem mean?
Scunthorpe problem means the unintentional blocking of harmless online content, such as emails, searches or accounts, by profanity filters or spam detectors, due to a substring resembling an obscene word.
What part of speech is Scunthorpe problem?
Scunthorpe problem is a noun.

Words near Scunthorpe problem in the dictionary

  1. Scunny
  2. scuns
  3. Scunthonian
  4. Scunthonians
  5. Scunthorpe
  6. Scunthorpe problem
  7. scuntion
  8. scuntions
  9. scup
  10. scuppaug
  11. scuppaugs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Scunthorpe problem (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: “Scunthorpe problem.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scunthorpe_problem. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.