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

Amy West medievalist at W-STS.COM
Fri Apr 27 14:39:44 UTC 2012


On 4/27/12 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:13:24 -0400
> From:    Ben Zimmer<bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject: Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it mean?
>
> Further discussion by James McElvenny on Fully (sic), an Australian linguablog:
>
> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/fullysic/2012/04/27/kind-of-butthole/
>
It's a good blog post about it. I'll have to check to see if that sense
of "butthole" was in OED 1 when I get home. The other question is
whether the writer would have checked to see if it had a non-marked sense.

Re: "butthole" not showing up in a list of slang synonyms, which was
mentioned in a previous post, it could have been overlooked because it
was self-explanatory. . .

Finally, re: this getting by the censors: that was half the fun for the
writers and artists. Remember that comics have always been subversive.

---Amy West

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