For years, Apple has taken a stern line on obscenity and other adult content on its App Store, with its approvals team rejecting apps for gratuitously sexual or offensive content. The company has even ended up in spats with satirists and a company that sold swimsuits over its policies.

Now venerable British magazine Viz has sneaked beneath its radar with its new Profanisaurus app, based on the famously racy reference work fronted by its Roger Mellie character. With more than 12,000 definitions, the £1.49 app will introduce iPhone users to concepts including "Darth Vader's hat stand", "David Coulthard's chin" and "camper's kebab".

"I know it's going to be hugely popular," said Felix Dennis, chairman of Dennis Publishing, which owns Viz. "It's not a dictionary, which is what everybody forgets. It's the longest-standing joke apart from Mornington Crescent, and it's all made up by readers. I think people are going to be getting this app out in the pub after they've had a few drinks."

Apple's approval of the app may not come as a surprise, since its official App Store guidelines – published in September 2010 – make it clear that the company treats individual apps on their merits.

"We will reject Apps for any content or behaviour that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a supreme court justice once said, 'I'll know it when I see it'. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it," explains the document, which is available to all iOS developers.

"We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate," explained the guidelines. "If you want to describe sex, write a book or song, or create a medical app."

The Profanisaurus is unlikely to fall into the latter category. If it does, it would be the first medical app to include descriptions of a "quantum wank" and "undertaker's privileges".

A previous version of the Profanisaurus was approved and released on the App Store in 2009, albeit at a time when Apple's approval policies were in their early stages.

Dennis himself will be vindicated by Apple's decision not to ban the app, however. Speaking to the Guardian before it was approved, he vowed not to take any rejection lightly.

"If they turn it down, I'm going to war," he said. "There are laws in this country. No one is going to argue that this is pornography." Thankfully, no hostilities will be necessary now.