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

Mon Apr 30 14:34:28 UTC 2012

I've re-conferred with my teenage informant from 1947 (well, she's in close
touch with her inner teen).

Mrs. X, who's cooked for sixty years and has a doctorate in English,
responded that while she's "very familiar" with the use of "butt" as an
innocent designator of meat (she mentioned "Boston butt" specifically),
she'd never heard of beef "buttholes" (though she quickly deduced their
existence).

So here it is, 65 years after that fateful day at Riverdale High, and a
food-savvy, language-aware member of the public, otherwise chosen at
random, testifies that even today hot-dog "buttholes" would be too crude
for the comics and furthermore are news to her.

As to me.

WNID3 in 1961 doesn't list "butthole" in any sense.  My guess is that even
the meat-packing industry uses "butthole" and "asshole" interchangeably,
with "butthole" reserved for its very rare semi-formal printed appearances.
Surely there's a formal euphemism as well.  In other words, I doubt that
"butthole" was  lexicalized as an industry term-of-art in 1947.

I tend to believe that the very clever pun on "prime" is more likely to be
Brewer's than Montana's. In any case, the major questions of  why
"butthole" is there, why it's a predicate adjective, and how it got by the
editors remain unanswered.

JL

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> mean?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> John's analysis is as acute as always, but I don't think we can say with
> any confidence that "butthole" was "vanishingly rare" in 1947,  given the
> taboo or semi-taboo nature of the term, the antiquity of "butt," and the
> discovery of a printed 1942 ex. that was already part of a larger idiom
> ("cut someone a new butt-hole").
>
> Of course, the above explains nothing.  Anyone adult familiar with "butt"
> (and there must have been millions) would have been likely to associate
> even a novel-seeming "butthole" with the anus - regardless if Montana was
> punning on the packing-industry term.
>
> Which few people knew.  And if Montana knew it, he'd know it referred to a
> cow's asshole, and - if he had any sense - he wouldn't have put it in his
> strip. I suspect that the semantic link to "prime" is simply a coincidence.
>
> Unless, in line with Doug, it was intended by a letterer as an April Fool's
> prank - a prank that succeeded too well.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Baker, John <JBAKER at stradley.com> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Baker, John" <JBAKER at STRADLEY.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> > mean?
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > The transcription error theory assumes a lot.  It's certainly possible
> > that Bob Montana, the Archie artist, had someone else do his lettering.
>  I
> > would guess (but don't know) that Montana inked the strip himself, but
> > lettering is a specialized and, to most cartoonists, rather boring skill.
> >  For example, Carl Barks, who otherwise  created the Donald Duck and
> Uncle
> > Scrooge comic book stories from scratch, had his wife do the lettering.
>  If
> > Montana had any kind of artistic assistant at all, that person would have
> > done its lettering.  Most cartoonists today use computer fonts.  But
> > consider the following assumptions implicit in the theory:
> >
> > 1. It assumes that the letterer would have seen some other word and
> > instead lettered "butthole," a word that at the time was vanishingly rare
> > and, under this assumption, would have made no sense in context.
> >
> > 2.  It assumes that Montana did not even look at the strip before it was
> > sent off to the syndicate.  That can't have been normal procedure.
> >
> > 3.  It assumes that there was no question from the syndicate or from the
> > carrying newspapers (except maybe in Zanesville).  I would think that the
> > syndicate may well have asked Montana about the word, possibly even by
> long
> > distance telephone.  Presumably he had some satisfactory explanation of
> the
> > word's meaning (unfortunately unobtainable to us).  As for the carrying
> > newspapers, there were 700 of these, according to Wikipedia, and each had
> > an editor.  The 700 number is probably from when the strip's popularity
> was
> > at its height, but I expect that was around 1947.  In many small towns,
> of
> > course, the comic strips would have been run without further review, and
> > probably there had never been any trouble from Archie, which was not a
> > transgressive strip, but larger newspapers would know from sad experience
> > that every strip had to be reviewed.
> >
> > So, while I don't mean to eliminate a transcription error as a
> > possibility, I think the theory raises more questions than it answers.
> >
> >
> > John Baker
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> > Of Jonathan Lighter
> > Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2012 7:47 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it mean?
> >
> > "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:
> >
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > > -----------------------
> > > 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
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
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>
>
>
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>
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