From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
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. The feature key on a Mac (same as alt, sense 2).
4. obs. Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII ⊗
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 ⊕ character. See
also ASCII.