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

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> NewspaperArchive has been down this evening. I intended to search for the
> phrase "*Being an usher after school must be prime*!"  That could help
> determine how many other papers ran the strip that day, and in what form.

Well, OCR for comic strips is pretty hit-or-miss. I felt lucky that
searching NPA for "butthole" actually turned up one appearance of the
strip, in the Elyria (OH) Chronicle-Telegram (as reported upthread). I
just tried searching on the day in question (Apr. 2, 1947) for some
two-word collocations and found the strip in the Janesville (WI) Daily
Gazette and the Zanesville (OH) Times Recorder. Intriguingly, in the
Zanesville paper, the word "butthole" is illegible, as if it had been
partially effaced. Perhaps it offended an editor's sensibilities.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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