diff --git a/docs/docsite/rst/dev_guide/testing/sanity/no-underscore-variable.rst b/docs/docsite/rst/dev_guide/testing/sanity/no-underscore-variable.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..31376438b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/docsite/rst/dev_guide/testing/sanity/no-underscore-variable.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+Sanity Tests » no-underscore-variable
+=====================================
+
+In the future, Ansible may use the identifier ``_`` to internationalize its
+message strings.  To be ready for that, we need to make sure that there are
+no conflicting identifiers defined in the code base.
+
+In common practice, ``_`` is frequently used as a dummy variable (a variable
+to receive a value from a function where the value is useless and never used).
+In Ansible, we're using the identifier ``dummy`` for this purpose instead.
+
+Example of unfixed code:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    for _ in range(0, retries):
+        success = retry_thing()
+        if success:
+            break
+
+Example of fixed code:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    for dummy in range(0, retries):
+        success = retry_thing()
+        if success:
+            break
diff --git a/test/sanity/code-smell/no-underscore-variable.sh b/test/sanity/code-smell/no-underscore-variable.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..45170b1069
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/sanity/code-smell/no-underscore-variable.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+# Only needed until we can enable a pylint test for this.  We may have to write
+# one or add it to another existing test (like the one to warn on inappropriate
+# variable names).  Adding to an existing test may be hard as we may have many
+# other things that are not compliant with that test.
+
+
+# Need to fix everything in the whitelist in order to enable a pylint test.
+# We've settled on "dummy" as the variable to replace dummy variables with
+# (vast majority of these cases)
+#
+# before enabling *this* test, we need to create a full list of files which we need to fix
+# Can use the base find command to help generate that list
+#   find . -name '*.py' -type f -exec egrep -H '( |[^C]\()_( |,|\))' \{\} \+
+#
+underscore_as_variable=$(find . -path ./test/runner/.tox -prune \
+        -path ./contrib/inventory/gce.py \
+        -o -name '*.py' -type f -exec egrep -H '( |[^C]\()_( |,|\))' \{\} \+ )
+
+
+if test -n "$underscore_as_variable" ; then
+  printf "\n== Underscore used as a variable ==\n"
+  printf "%s" "$underscore_as_variable"
+  failures=$(printf "%s" "$underscore_as_variable"| wc -l)
+  failures=$((failures + 2))
+  exit "$failures"
+fi
+
+exit 0
diff --git a/test/sanity/code-smell/skip.txt b/test/sanity/code-smell/skip.txt
index bfb8b181a2..68e39f1624 100644
--- a/test/sanity/code-smell/skip.txt
+++ b/test/sanity/code-smell/skip.txt
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 inappropriately-private.sh
+no-underscore-variable.sh