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

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Dullville" is a good guess, but AFAIK the adjective isn't recorded till
the beatnik era. (The 1951 exx. I see are nouns, e.g., "runs from Boreburg
to Dullville" [Walter Winchell].)

*If* it existed in 1947, it might have been the sort of word that teenagers
would use.

It's a big *if,* however.  And  "Dullsville" has always been far more
common.


JL

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 5:46 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: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> mean?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The word "dull[s]ville" suggests itself.
>
> I see "Dullville" in more-or-less appropriate figurative use as early as
> 1951. It could have been in existence -- although likely infrequent and
> not universally familiar -- as early as 1947.
>
> Whoever inked the strip's text could have copied this word wrong, for
> any of several reasons (perhaps even intentionally), e.g., in tracing or
> transcribing a partially illegible draft.
>
> ----------
>
> The defacement of "butthole" in the Zanesville paper is interesting. To
> my eye, this is extremely unlikely to be fortuitous: I believe someone
> disliked the word and scrubbed it out. Is it possible to guess when/how
> this occurred? I picture some reader (in 1947, or maybe in [say] 1987)
> simply defacing a copy, the copy which was digitized for N'archive,
> which appears to be labeled "Ohio State Museum / Newspaper Division".
> Might it be possible to review a different copy (in a different library
> or whatever)?
>
> ----------
>
> Has somebody already noted the date of the item? Maybe set up for print
> on 1 April, I suppose? Do strange things appear on the same date in
> other years?
>
> (In the Elyria paper I find "Archie" from 2 April 1946, without anything
> stranger than "chippin' your gums". The 1 April 1946 installment is
> devoted to Archie's friends playing a trick on him [but Jughead seems to
> take the medicine instead]. I don't find anything explicit for the
> special day in 1947.)
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
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