splat: n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the asterisk (`*') character (ASCII 0101010).

:splat: n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for
the asterisk (`*') character (ASCII 0101010). This may derive
from the `squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early
line printers. 2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the
`#' character (ASCII 0100011). 3. [Rochester Institute of
Technology] The {feature key} on a Mac (same as {alt},
sense 2). 4. obs. Name used by some people for the
Stanford/ITS extended ASCII
circle-x
character. This character is also called `blobby' and `frob',
among other names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a
notation for `tensor product'. 5. obs. Name for the
semi-mythical Stanford extended ASCII
circle-plus
character. See also {{ASCII}}.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary