1947 Archie Comic "butthole." What did it mean?

[David A. Daniel]

Polite society (ahem) refers neither to assholes nor armpits as examples of
that which everyone has, but to belly buttons. We could learn, for example,
from the Mexicans who call/used to call VW beetles (the old variety)
"ombligos" (belly buttons) because, of course, everybody has/had one. I
think one criterion for citing something that everyone has must be that it
has to be at least mildly amusing. I mean, otherwise, we could just as
easily cite intestines, livers, hearts, noses, ears, teeth - well maybe not
teeth, but almost everything else not gender specific.
DAD



Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: 1947 Archie Comic "butthole." What did it mean?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---

On May 3, 2012, at 11:39 AM, Charles C Doyle wrote:

> I sent the following several hours ago, but, as far as I can tell,  it
never got posted (that happens to a certain percentage of the items I
endeavor to post-- perhaps 5% or 10%).
>
> <<  I must confess:  The (now in print) _Dictionary of Modern Proverbs_
lacks an entry for "Theories are like assholes . . . ."  However, entries
for the more common "Excuses are like assholes . . ." and "Opinions are like
assholes . . ." do appear (with the silly "armpits" variants).  >>
>
> --Charlie

That *is* a silly variant, since we've all (well, most of us, anyway) got
two of those.  Although I suppose in that form the punchline would be "We've
all got 'em" or the link.  But the substitution, presumably prompted by the
paucity of odiferous concave body parts beginning with a-, is not
unprecedented; various places are typically described alternatively as "the
asshole/armpit of X", where X is a larger geographical entity.

LH

>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>
> Um, everybody's got one.
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 10:22 PM, Dan Nussbaum <yekkey at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Poster:       Dan Nussbaum <yekkey at AOL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: 1947 Archie Comic "butthole." What did it mean?
>>
>>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>>
>> And you know what they say about theories.
>>
>> What?
>>
>>
>> Dan Nussbaum=20
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org