diff --git a/js/jquery.mobile.core.js b/js/jquery.mobile.core.js
index 25b99d9c..964fc7ac 100644
--- a/js/jquery.mobile.core.js
+++ b/js/jquery.mobile.core.js
@@ -118,9 +118,6 @@
 			}, 150 );
 		},
 
-		// compile the namespace normalization regex once
-		normalizeRegex: /-([a-z])/g,
-
 		// take a data attribute property, prepend the namespace
 		// and then camel case the attribute string
 		nsNormalize: function(prop){