heavy-metal umlaut

A form of heavy metal umlaut — An umlaut (“diacritical mark”) over a letter in the name of a heavy metal band, added gratuitously for mere stylistic effect.

Meanings

nounheavy-metal umlaut (plural heavy-metal umlauts)

plural heavy-metal umlauts

  1. alternativeAlternative form of heavy metal umlaut.

    His bag was graffed up with band names I didn’t recognize—lightning bolts and heavy-metal umlauts.

    2008, Simmone Howell, “Lucky Smoke”, in Everything Beautiful, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books, →ISBN, page 60
    3 more examples

    One of many acts of delinquency promoted by Mötley Crüe is free use of the heavy-metal umlaut with reckless disregard for lïnguïstïc cönventiöns.

    2007, Greg P. Herriges, “Smokin’ in the Boys Room”, in Hard Rock Guitar Songs For Dummies, Milwaukee, Wis.: Hal Leonard Corporation, →ISBN, “Performance Notes” section, page 176

    • 1848 • Branwell Brontë, the only brother of literature’s famous Brontë sisters, dies of tuberculosis. Branwell was a hard-partying alcoholic and probably a drug addict—as you could no doubt tell from the bad-ass heavy-metal umlaut over the “e” in his name.

    2008, Ken Jennings, “September 24”, in Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days, New York, N.Y.: Villard Books, →ISBN, page 382

    All scaling is relative to the upper-left corner of the text. In other words, as the text gets larger or smaller, the upper-left corner of the text remains in place. This might be a little hard to see because the upper-left corner that remains in place is actually a little above the horizontal stroke of the first ‘T’ in the text string, in the area reserved for diacritics such as accent marks and heavy-metal umlauts.

    2010, Charles Petzold, “Elements and Properties”, in Microsoft Silverlight Edition: Programming Windows Phone 7, Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press, →ISBN, part II (Silverlight), page 175
Cite this entry
APA

heavy-metal umlaut. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/heavy-metal%20umlaut

MLA

“heavy-metal umlaut.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/heavy-metal%20umlaut. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “heavy-metal umlaut,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/heavy-metal%20umlaut.

Source: heavy-metal umlaut on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.