for some reason, asshole is ruder than asshat. I think the fundamental (hah!) thing here is that ass, and fanny are somehow not rude, but hole is.
Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
71–80 of 89 posts
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#72First time I ever heard it was in the US Navy, Circa 1994-ish. Was possibly the most perfect word to describe a particular junior officer who loved to walk around the barracks grounds and harass in-uniform sailors who failed to salute him. "Oh, look it's Ensign Asshat."
[deleted]
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#73Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#74I have loved this word since I first heard it. I assumed it evolved out of the common expressions: "get your head out of your ass" or "he's got his head up his ass". To me, this evokes an image of wearing one's ass as a hat. I love the ridiculousness of picturing that.
If I had to guess: it is a version of asshole you might be able to say in front of your mother.
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#75Another related word is "assclown" — which, as far as I can tell, was created accidentally when actor David Herman delivered a line of dialoge with emphasis on the wrong syllable while filming Office Space. He was meant to call Michael Bolton a "no-talent-ass clown", but delivered the line as "no-talent ass-clown". Or something like that. And now assclown is a thing.
I always thought of it as separated by a slash.
Ass/clown.
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On the other hand, I guess words like fatass have this same problem of equating the person with something the person possesses. On the third hand, I'm not sure that "fatass" really means "your ass is fat" specifically; I've always understood it to mean "you are fat, and an ass." That is, I take it in this respect to be like "dumbass": "you are dumb, and an ass", not "your ass is dumb".
I've never been aware of your interpretation. I've always understood "fat-ass" to just mean "fat," or perhaps closely-associated derogatory traits like "sedentary" or "lazy."
Why is it fat-ass or dumb-ass, and not fat+ass and dumb+ass ?
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#77The use of written word in these scenarios is always interesting to me. I have video of me and some friends using the word "asshat" predating their first recorded usage by almost a decade. (I have no idea why I remembered that video when reading this... but here it is on my hard drive) Ironically in a similar context, a bunch of punk rockers talking about someone in a band we didn't like! I always wonder how many wor…
> I always wonder how many words have an etymology which predates written use significantly due to the "class" of people who use that word
I studied a bit of Shakespeare at university, and my awesome lecturer (https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/619) was always very clear to note that for many phrases "Shakespeare was the first to write it down", which is quite different to "Shakespeare made up this phrase / word".
To your point, he of course was attempting to write for a variety of classes, including the illiterate (his plays weren't written to be published, that only happened after his death - they were ephemera to be performed and witnessed). His success may very well have come from using many phrases that the "lower class" would have recognised from use not just inference.
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#78An aside, but one of my more fun small pranks involved two fortune cookies in the office circa 2007.
I extracted the real fortunes, and inserted two of my own. When a friend dropped by, I handed him one and took the other.
His fortune read "You are an asshat".
Which surprised him somewhat, differing as it did from the usual fare.
What blew him away was when I cracked my cookie and withdrew my fortune: "Your friend is an asshat".
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#79> It occupies the space between assez and asshead. The fact that asshead , a word I can honestly say I've never heard used in any English dialect, merited inclusion before asshat, a word I've heard a dozen times this last week, boggles my mind.
Well, as noted in the article, asshead has a few hundred years on asshat...
Words also lose notability and are removed from the dictionary all the time. Literally the inverse argument for adding "asshat".
Re: Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
#80I have loved this word since I first heard it. I assumed it evolved out of the common expressions: "get your head out of your ass" or "he's got his head up his ass". To me, this evokes an image of wearing one's ass as a hat. I love the ridiculousness of picturing that.
I’ve always taken it had being derived from this 1976 movie line: https://movie-sounds.org/western-movie-quotes/quotes-with-so...