1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it mean?

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Wed May 9 01:27:35 UTC 2012


 From what I've seen of Big Bang Theory, I would expect both meanings to
come into play in that particular instance, although, obviously, there
is no context for one of them. Compare that to scripts for NCIS, where
the writers endowed the Israeli character with a penchant for getting
proverbs and idioms wrong, usually by substituting a single word
incorrectly (occasionally more than one--making something like killing
two birds with one stone sound like picking two boogers with one
finger). I thought the writing to be rather ham-fisted and cliched--not
to mention totally unrealistic (never mind that they have a Chilean
playing the Israeli).

     VS-)

On 5/8/2012 7:41 PM, David A. Daniel wrote:
> So, there I was last night watching Big Bang Theory, the episode with
> Stephen Hawking in it. At the end he is telling Sheldon that his (Sheldon's)
> findings on the Higgs Boson particle are wrong. He says there is an
> arithmetic mistake on page 2, "quite the boner," he says. This, of course,
> would have sent Jake - over at Two and a Half Men - into hysterics: "Hawking
> said boner!" And it may well set off a discussion some 60 years hence on the
> ADS-L on the order of, "How could Hawking - Hawking! - have said something
> so rude, even in those permissive days?" We, of course, being serious adults
> of these times, know that he meant it was a really stupid mistake and that
> the usage makes no reference at all to an erection. Those future folks,
> however, may reckon boner=erection first (and maybe also something
> innocuous, oh yes, here it is, it also meant stupid mistake, but surely the
> principal meaning was erection and they were hoping to get away with it
> based on its secondary, innocuous meaning... etc.) So you see where I am
> winding tortuously my way to: As Baker, John says below, Montana almost
> certainly used butthole innocuously, secondary meanings being secondary, in
> the manner of Hawking's boner (heheh).
> DAD
> PS: If "Hawking's Boner" comes to mean public use of a word that has both an
> innocent and a rude meaning, I claim it. I suppose it could also be called
> an "Archie's Butthole." Anyone want to claim that one?

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