San Francisco, California - Twitter on Sunday apologized after users who used the word "Memphis" were "temporarily limited."

"A number of accounts that Tweeted the word 'Memphis' were temporarily limited due to a bug," Twitter Support said in a post on Sunday evening.

"It's been fixed and the accounts have now been restored. We're sorry this happened."

The problem was noticed hours earlier by fans of the NBA team Memphis Grizzlies and by users who mentioned soccer player Memphis Depay of the French club Olympique Lyonnais.

"Hey, @Twitter – can we talk about him yet?" the team asked in a post also showing a picture of the forward hours before Twitter acknowledged the issue.

A few hours later the Grizzlies posted a single "flushed face" emoticon. Twitter flagged multiple replies to the tweet saying that they "violated the Twitter Rules."

In another tweet the NBA team spelled its home city as "M.E.M.P.H.I.S Making. Easy. Money. Playing. Hoops. In. Style."

"When bots flood our comments with 'say the m word,'" the team also tweeted.