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

Tue Apr 24 12:22:26 UTC 2012

This mystifies me, in part because I've never encountered "butthole"
used predicatively in any sense. Has anybody?

HDAS has literal, vulgar "butthole" from 1951, but since "butt" is
documented as the human buttocks from the 18th C. (OED does a poor job
here), there can be little doubt it is far older.

So editors in 1947 would have understood the word anatomically exactly as
we do.

A large part of the mystery, then, is how the word slipped passed the
editors.  How many papers ran this particular strip?  A second question is
how "butthole" got into the strip in the first place.  I wouldn't rule out
sabotage quite yet.

Surely Bob Montana (a WWII veteran) must have been aware of the
implications of "butthole," even if he'd never heard the word used.

Even if he'd actually heard somebody use "butthole" to mean "unpleasant;
boring," I can't imagine why he'd want to risk stirring up trouble for
himself.  (Its counterpart, "prime," sounds to me like typical teen lingo
of 1947.)

Finally, somebody in the Boing Boing discussion calls Archie a "cockfart."
That seems unfairly judgmental.

JL

On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 12:27 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> mean?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A commenter at Boing Boing named Robert Baruch noted that there are
> citations in Google Books that associate a "butt hole" with a cul de
> sac. (See below.) Archie's phrase "Oh, it gets kinda butthole at
> times" may be referring to some metaphorical sense of a cul de sac.
> Perhaps Archie feels confined, trapped, bored, and/or optionless. A
> cul de sac is a dead end, so one might say it is a dead-end job, but
> that meaning doesn't quite match the meaning suggested by the comic
> strip.
>
> Cite: 1912 November 16, The Living Age, Different Dog Days by Horace
> Hutchinson, Start Page 444, Quote Page 445, The Living Age Company,
> Boston. (Google Books full view)
> http://books.google.com/books?id=oDdrJisSXdEC&q=butt-hole#v=snippet&
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> But our idea of a badger hunt was to send a dog up to the badger
> underground, to keep the brock occupied in a "butt-hole" - that is to
> say, a cul de sac in the ramifications of the great bury - while we
> digged across that particular tunnel and so cut him off from access to
> his many galleries and mansions; after which we could dig straight up
> to him at leisure.
> [End excerpt]
>
>
> Cite: 1898 May 28, Country Life Illustrated, Badger-Hunting, Start
> Page 669, Quote Page 670, Hudson & Kearns, London. (Google Books full
> view)
> http://books.google.com/books?id=mlBOAAAAYAAJ&q=%22butt+hole%22#v=snippet&
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Then the conclusion is "They've a got the old badger up into a butt
> hole." This means that he can go no further, except over the body of
> the assailing dog; and now it is time for the picks and spades, and
> the diggers' work.
> [End excerpt]
>
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 10:03 PM, Ben Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole."  What did
> it mean?
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Baker, John <JBAKER at stradley.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Sam Clements said:
> >> >
> >> > Google News hit, posted over at Straight Dope by an alert reader.
> >> >
> >> >
> >
> http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=plAsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=E8sEAAAAIBAJ&dq=calendar-girl&pg=4081%2C91102
> >> >
> >> > Betty says to Archie  "Being an usher after school must be prime."
> >> >
> >> > Archie replies  "Oh, it gets kinda butthole at times."
> >> >
> >> > How would this get by a censor if it had a modern meaning?  What did
> it
> >> > mean in the context of the times? Not in the OED as such that I could
> find.
> >>
> >> I suspect vandalism.  Has it been checked against the same comic in
> >> a different newspaper?
> >
> > It checks out -- Newspaperarchive has the same strip in the Elyria (OH)
> > Chronicle-Telegram, Apr. 2, 1947.
> >
> > Further discussion on BoingBoing:
> >
> > http://boingboing.net/2012/04/22/do-you-kiss-betty-andor-veron.html
> >
> >
> > --bgz
> >
> > --
> > Ben Zimmer
> > http://benzimmer.com/
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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