[Ads-l] "Boner" as sexual term versus word for 'big mistake' or 'funny goof-up' =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=93_?=post-1951?

Stanton McCandlish smccandlish at GMAIL.COM
Sun May 10 08:20:03 UTC 2020


I'd been aware of the survival of "boner" in the sense of 'an
embarrassing error' or 'a laughable mistake', and sometimes a derived usage
that seemed to mean something along the lines of 'an over-the-top joke or
skit' (i.e. intentional rather than accidental humor), into the 1970s,
though it was already pretty rare by then.

This caught my eye:
https://screenrant.com/joker-boner-comic-meme/

Short version: a 1951 Batman comic is all about the Joker and a series of
his "boner" crimes.  It just overwhelmingly dwells on the word, in panel
after panel, in phrasing that looks too double-entrendre to be accidental.
I have to wonder whether the penile sense was already established slang by
this date, but not permeated enough that censors at the Comics Code
Authority would catch it.

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