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

[Arnold Zwicky]

On May 3, 2012, at 10:04 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

>
> 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.

on armpits and other concavities:

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/concavities/

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/semfest-13/

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