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

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed May 9 16:47:19 UTC 2012


On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> "The buttocks; the posteriors. [Vulgar.]."

I was actually asking about _buttock(s)_. AFAIK, personally, _butt_
has always been problematic in polite society. I've known (black)
people who used "cigarette ends," but I don't know whether it was
avoidance or just a different dialect. I suspect the latter, since
they weren't otherwise "members of the Clean-Minded Club," as prisses
were called.

However, IME, _buttock(s)_ has always been both "proper English" and
primarily a literary form. It was, no doubt, also only literary for
Forrest Gump, with his "BUH-tahks," and also for his millions of
imitators. Unless the Gump pronunciation has been being used by others
all this time only in jest and I haven't been getting the joke.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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