Blow smoke up someone's ass

[Wilson Gray]

If merely "blow smoke" with the relevant meaning is the older form,
it's really interesting to find that out. I didn't hear this
expression used till, perhaps, the middle 'Fifties, and only in the
form, "blow smoke up someone's ass." As a consequence, I've always
considered the older, if such it be, form to be a euphemistic clip. It
just goes to show one: one never knows, do one?

IME, "blow smoke up someone's ass" is the only form used, except "in
decent company."

-Wilson

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 8:00 PM, Douglas G. Wilson<douglas at nb.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Blow smoke up someone's ass
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Michael Sheehan wrote:
>> Need to know the actual origin of "to blow smoke up someone's ass." The
>> story about 18th c. tobacco smoke enemas seems highly dubious, but it's
>> all over the place.
> --
>
> These enemas really were applied, but it's questionable whether they
> have any relevance to the phrase origin in question. The sense
> development is not what one would expect, since the tobacco-smoke enema
> was intended for good ends, for reviving the drowned, curing intestinal
> ailments, etc., not for frivolous or deceptive purposes.
>
> It seems to me that "blow smoke" usually means "bullshit" or "speak
> falsely/deceptively". Cassell slang dictionary says "confuse", "mystify
> through speech", "boast","brag", "flatter".
>
> Is the form with "up [someone's] ass" the original form of the phrase,
> or was "blow smoke" alone the original form? The Cassell book dates the
> short form about 100 years earlier than the lengthened 'intensified'
> form with "ass", and this is plausible according to my naive notions,
> but I don't know what the evidence is, if any.
>
> Assuming that the original was simply "blow smoke", various
> origin-candidates occur to me:
>
> (1) "blow smoke" (like "produce a smokescreen") metaphoric for "confuse"
> or so;
>
> (2) "[just] blowing smoke" = "producing [only] something
> useless/uninformative from one's mouth" (cf. "[just] whistling 'Dixie'");
>
> (3) from the practice of blowing smoke to confuse/pacify bees.
>
> Probably there are other candidates.
>
> What does HDAS have?
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
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--
-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

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