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

[Jonathan Lighter]

_Archie_ has arrived. I've just finished reading "More than 800 Sequential
Comic Strips from the Very Beginning!"

The strip in question appears on the bottom of p. 128, as part of a story
about Archie's usher job, which March 19 and ran through April 24.

It's the only time the strip uses the word "butthole." There's one other
use of "prime," weeks later, in the sense of "enjoyable; splendid."
"Bug-house" appears once but clearly hyphenated.

Montana (who, judging from a photo on p. 295, strongly resembled Jughead)
uses a fair amount of slang, most of it either familiar late '40s stuff
(e.g., "cut a rug," "clip joint," "keen," "jaloppy," "square," "hep,"
etc.).  I see no evidence anywhere among the strips of the kind of
super-subtle punning that would be suggested by a contrast between "prime"
and "offal."

Montana uses a number of expressions that strike me as ad-hoc and for the
nonce. Certainly I've never seen them before and they have a factitious
sound. Examples: "crack knees" (dance), "drip-lip" (a 'drip'), "tight as a
sailor's britches," "hop the hickories" (go skiing), "feeble greeble"
(weakling), "flick a lid" (take a look), "gush-slush" (romantic lyrics),
etc.

I was very surprised to see Archie ask Jughead, whom he's just called a
"double-crosser," "What is this...'Slug-Your-Buddy Week'?" (March 4, 1946,
p. 16).  (Cf. HDAS, "fuck-your-buddy week," asserted by one source to date
from WW2).

There are a handful of other items of passing interest, one being the
remarks of the MC at the Junior Prom (Feb. 27, 1946): "Here's the first
jump, you cats!...All reet, Doc, let 'er rock!"

It isn't "rock' n' roll," but it's a foreshadowing..

I could find no indication of the precise source of the April 2, 1947,
strip.

Here's how the shrewd, media-savvy McClure Syndicate pitched the strip to
papers in 1945.  "Archie" had been appearing in_Pep_ comics since 1941:

"ARCHIE has already won the heart of the nation as the outstanding
portrayal of Youth with its inevitable and hilarious dilemmas, its fetching
romance, its endlessly delightful humor" (300).

In the words of Conrad: "Ah, Youth!"

JL



On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> mean?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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