Asshole
From Academic Kids
- This article is about the word "Asshole". For the card game sometimes known as "Asshole", see President (game).
Asshole or arsehole (outside the U.S.) is a term referring to the anus. It is generally used as a profanity in expressing deep contempt for someone or to describe a particularly abrasive person.
This word is found in colloquial speech in a number of cultures (in both English and in direct translation to other languages). This is due to the fact that it describes an organ of elimination that is considered a taboo region (belonging to the intimate parts) of the body in many societies.
The English word ass (meaning donkey, derived from the same root as its zoological name Equus asinus) may also be used as a term of contempt, referring to a silly or stupid person. In recent years, the words arse and ass have become synonymous in the United States, however in the rest of the world, ass still only refers to the donkey, rather than the arse (buttocks). It is worth noting that some varieties of English drop the letter "r", leading to practically identical pronunciations of ass and arse.
Until the early 1990s, the word was considered one of a number of taboo words that could not be uttered on American commercial television. Comedian Andrew Dice Clay caused major controversy when he uttered the word during a televised awards show in the 1980s. By 1994, however, the word had become less a taboo, and was often featured in dialogue on the long-running television series NYPD Blue; it has yet to become anything close to commonplace on network TV, however. It is important to note that while the word ass has found a place on broadcast television, asshole is not used, probably due to its more vulgar connotation.
In 1993, actor Denis Leary enjoyed some success with a comedic song called "Asshole" which opened his stage play No Cure for Cancer and was featured in a music video. The British ska-punk band Snuff also have a song named Arsehole.
The scientific term black hole proved problematic, because its literal translation into Russian turned out to be the Russian equivalent of "asshole".
Asshat
Asshat is a slightly more trendy and less severe variation of asshole, graphically describing someone who has his "head up his ass" (i.e., not knowing what's going on), or a variation of "butthead." In the former sense, it is suggested that one is "wearing one's ass for a hat", or alternately, "a hat for one's ass." A more modern usage of asshat describes a person doing something stupid, and can apply to anyone: "the boss is up to asshattery because he broke the computer even though he knew he was doing the wrong thing."
The word is popular in many online communities, serving as a more palatable version of its antecedent. According to Google's Usenet statistics, the word only saw a token appearance every day or two starting in July, 1999, but following a slow rise in 2002, it entered popular usage in May, 2003. The pejorative was popularized by its use on online community Fark.com and in various Internet Relay Chat communities.
Also a term used in Massive Multiplayer Online games to describe sitting your character on the head of a dead character; "Bob Killed Fred then he Asshated him ROFL."
December 20, 2002 saw a graphical representation of an asshat in the online comic /usr/bin/w00t (http://www.w00t-comic.net/20021220.html), whereafter it was used frequently to represent customers who annoyed the technical support personnel.
