[sparky2]

(sigh)
(*yes, I'm replying to myself.)

Dropping this function, and opting to include a user-defined "badwords" array
probably seemed (to the developers, at the time) as a necessary
step in allowing for multilingual installations.

Wouldn't maintenance of the "badwords" entries be better handled the way IPban BanEmailDomain entries are handled?
(Entries are stored space-delimited, as a looong string, which resides in the settings table) e.g.:
vbb.setting
settingid = 102
title = "Email addresses to Ban"
varname = banemail
optioncode = textarea
and are editable via the AdminCP}}vBulletin Settings interface