Every year, among the 20,000 personalized license plates that PennDOT receives, some try to skirt the rules and have to be rejected, writes Stephanie Farr for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Those plates are usually related to potty humor, cunning wordplay, and cursing. To ensure anything inappropriate does not get approved and kids do not learn swear words by reading them on cars, each plate request is individually reviewed by staff at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

They run them through several dictionaries, including ones for internet acronyms and slang and euphemisms, make sure they are not swear words in other languages and also read them out upside down and in reverse.

So far, a total of 2,872 vanity plates have been rejected over the years.

Some of them were from zealous sports fans, such as LFG PHLS (Let’s [expletive] Go Phils) and SB52WFC (Super Bowl LII World [expletive] Champions).

Many variations on the word “asshole” are rejected each year, including “AS SOUL,” “ACE HOLE,” and “ASSA9.”

Some drivers have even tried to tempt fate with plates like “STOLEIT,” “BNK ROBR,” and “DRUG DLR.”

There is a question of why plates like “GANDALF,” the wizard from The Lord of the Rings, and “CHOWDAH,” the colloquial Boston pronunciation of chowder, were turned down, but the answer is only known to PennDOT.

Read more about rejected personalized license plates in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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