Asshole
Asshole (or arsehole in British English) is slang for the anus and is also used as a word to hurt people's feelings. It's made up from the word arse, which has been used for a long time as another name for the anus. This was first added to the word hole in the sixteenth century in books, but may have been used in talking a long time before that. By the 1970s, Hustler magazine featured people they did not like as "Asshole of the month."[1]
How it is used[change | change source]
Asshole is mainly used as a bad word towards someone that the speaker does not like. You could not say "asshole" on normal television in the US until the early 1990s, but it was sometimes in PG-13 and R rated films before this.
Political usage[change | change source]
In 2000, during a Labor Day event, George W. Bush made an off-hand remark to his running mate, Dick Cheney, that New York Times reporter Adam Clymer was a "major league asshole."[2]
Rock songs using the word asshole[change | change source]
Gene Simmons of rock band Kiss released a solo album called Asshole which also featured a song of the same name. Denis Leary also had a song called Asshole in 1993.
Similar words[change | change source]
Words similar to asshole are asshat, assclown, asstard, asspat and asspit.
Footnotes[change | change source]
- ↑ "Out like Flynt." Time (magazine), 9 April 1979. Retrieved 9 April 2009.
- ↑ "A "major league asshole"". Salon.com. 9 April 2000. Archived from the original on 12 December 2009. Retrieved 10 April 2009.