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

[Laurence Horn]

On May 3, 2012, at 12:38 PM, David A. Daniel wrote:

> 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
>
Another criterion, to judge from our collection, is concavity.

And of course they needn't be body parts at all; we could cite alienable but ubiquitous possessions.  I've always liked this line from Pope, which is nicely adaptable to (though presumably not designed for) the non-idiosyncracy of grammaticality judgments:

'Tis with our judgments as with our watches; no two go just alike, yet each believes his own.

LH
>
>
> 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

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