The Profanisaurus was originally published as a supplement stapled into the middle of the December 1997 edition of the Viz comic (Viz 87), with 'over 700 rude words and phrases'.

[1]) Subsequent versions have been Das Krapital (2010, a play on Karl Marx's Das Kapital), Hail Sweary (2013, featuring on the cover Roger in a monk's outfit kneeling as if in prayer, and the title in Olde Englishe above; an obvious and obscene reference to the Catholic 'Hail Mary'), War and Piss (2018, a play on Tolstoy's War and Peace, with "over 20,000" definitions) and Turtleshead Revisited (2024, a play on Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited).

Unlike a traditional dictionary or thesaurus, the content is enlivened by often pungent or politically incorrect observations and asides, intended to provide further comic effect.

A much-used technique for sexual phrases is to include them in a quoted passage from a non-existent Barbara Cartland novel.

David Stubbs wrote that Profanisaurus "represents what you might call the maximalist tendency in obscenity".