[Ads-l] Heard: "bud" > _butt_

[Laurence Horn]

More “butt” imperialism, after the now standard “butt-naked”.  Both “nip in the butt” and “butt-naked” are in the eggcorn database, the latter as a “nearly standard” or “nearly mainstream” reanalysis.  (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/369/butt/).  Some contributors insist that “butt naked” is the appropriate form, to which Arnold replied: 

In response to scruss… Please notice the “nearly mainsteam” label on this one, and remember that for a very good eggcorn, the people who use it are absolutely convinced they’re right.

Less standard, but also attested, is “no butts about it”, which—unlike “butt naked” and perhaps “nip it in the butt”—is harder to rationalize. (Of course it also occurs self-consciously as a pun.)  

LH



> On Feb 17, 2021, at 7:34 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> A. We gotta nip this in the butt!
> B. Did you say "butt"?
> A. Yeah.
> B. It's "bud," dood.
> A. No, it's not. That doesn't mean anything. "Nip in the butt" is like, you
> know, a dog bites them in the ass. Gets their attention.
> 
> Wonder how A would analyze the shift of "rosebud" to "rosebutt." Probably
> would claim that "rosebud" was the change.
> 
> -- 
> - Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org