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“Offensive is the term used when those applications were rejected. I understand when it comes to getting rejection for using trademarks. Yet someone gets away with JSTDOIT?”

So Edelstein decided to go with what he felt was a term about as offensive as he could find. He discovered Smegma as a high schooler many decades back.

“A few of us were sitting in the library, before the days of the internet, and somebody happened upon the word in the giant Oxford English Dictionary,” he recalls. “And like typical goofy teens, we were all giggling and rolling around the floor. It became a word that just stuck with me. Sadly, I think that’s about the one thing I remember from high school.

“Then it dawned on me this summer. What would be the most absurd and most disgusting word I could try to register for a plate? I would have put FURUNCULAR MYIASIS, but it was too many characters for a licence plate.”

Go to Google for more on that condition. But Edelstein, clearly something of a physiology buff, claims that the cure for the latter condition entails … mmm …. bacon.

“I’m pretty certain they would have at least checked Smegma before, and in a million years it would never be approved. And yet they came back 24 hours later and said congratulations. It’s one of the most disgusting fungi out there. So now I have the plate. Great. It will at least drive passersby to their dictionaries … sorry … the internet for its definition.

“But my wife is none too pleased about this plate. She thought it was funny at first. Of course, then when she realized the car was going to be parked in front of the house, she wasn’t terribly amused.”

Nor was she much amused when Edelstein suggested she apply for her own vanity plate with this message: 3JOHZZA.

Hint: Message is best discerned when seen through a mirror.

And this just in: One Mr. Roth called Edelstein on Thursday morning to tell him the SAAQ phoned to inform him it had accepted ROTH as a vanity licence plate ­after the request had initially been rejected. Roth had gone on to order an alternate plate, but now it will be switched for his original choice. Coincidence?

bbrownstein@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/billbrownstein