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

[Jonathan Lighter]

These exx. are not commensurable with the word in "Archie." The assertion
that they are partly assumes that taboos and semi-taboos must be logically
consistent, which I think is obviously not so.

But more important: the secondary vulgar meanings of the terms cited are
indeed *secondary.*  In every case the innocuous sense not only came first,
it was well established and in most cases universally known before the
vulgar sense appeared.  Thus any vulgar sense could easily be disregarded
where its appearance would be contextually illogical.

In the case of "butthole," however, no completely innocuous, generally
known, and current earlier sense seems to have existed.  The 1904 brokerage
"butthole" may be an exception, but even we lexicological experts are not
sure what it meant. If it was innocuous, as it presumably was, there seems
to be little enough evidence of people using it or recognizing it. Bob
Montana could not have expected his readers to know it either.

Moreover, with _butt_ 'buttocks' widely known in 1947 (even to Mrs. X,
though she believed she'd only heard it in  "Move your butt!"), plus the
currency of "asshole," it seems impossible for me to believe that a vast
number, perhaps even most, readers, would have interpreted the word in an
anal sense.
 \-\

Now, as Mrs. X suggested, whether they would have allowed themselves to
assume that's what Archie was actually alluding to is another question. But
the fact appears to be that "butthole," adj 'boring' exists nowhere else,
and it is difficult to imagine what it's doing in "Archie."

The case for a perfectly innocuous understanding of "butthole" in 1947 is
weakened almost to nothing by the complete absence of further examples of
Montana's implied sense both before and (now 65 years) after. (Did Jon
Green find one? I never did, and I obsessively recorded every new slang
term I came across for forty years, including those from hundreds of slang
questionnaires turned in by often potty-mouthed college students.) The case
is weakened further by John's survey of newspapers and, if I may say so, my
own reading experience, both of which suggest that editors in 1947 avoided
printing _butt_ 'buttocks' as vulgar.

But "butthole"?  The mystery is far from solved.

Maybe I'll have the Archie book by the end of this week.

JL



On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> mean?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Now you made me think of Blazing Saddles!
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 5/8/2012 8:42 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> > And the name of the first black, world's heavyweight boxing champion,
> > Jack Johnson, of Galveston, Texas, would also have been some kind of
> > pun for "penis," as would be the company name, Johnson & Johnson. "A
> > johnson?! That thing is a johnson *&* johnson!"
> > -- -Wilson
>
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