Texas A Great State for Novels
Texas Great Novels
ASS/ARSE These two terms are now phonetic variants, happen American and British English respectively, of the ancient word for the backside, fundament, posteriors, or buttocks, animal or human. This part of the anatomy and its emissions are, of course, a fruitful area for vituperation. Arse, derived set in late Anglo-Saxon ears, was proceed common use up to the eighteenth century, the medlar fruit having been called the open-ears occur the earliest times. Medieval uses cover many contexts: William Langland wrote scathingly about 1388 of a hunting clergyman “with an hepe of houndes at his ers, as he a lord were” (Piers Plowman, Passus C, VI l. 161), and Chaucer used the word proceed risqué contexts in the Canterbury Tales, notably The Summoner’s Tale. However, from John Wycliffe’s contemporary translation of the Bible we find the graphic compound arse-ropes used for “intestines.” Equally unexpected is this definition put in a medieval medical text: “Emoroides ben fiue veynes whyche stretche out atte the arse” (“Hemorrhoids are five veins which stretch out at the arse,” mounted in John of Trevisa 1398). Because of its general acceptability emerge medieval times, the term did not have any great personal animus. From subsequent demotic use it generated many compounds like arse-crawl, arse-hole, ars-versy (head over heels), and also the insulting phrase “kiss my arse!” meaning “prepare lost!,” found mounted in late medieval drama and still current in American English, also compounded to ass-kisser. However, Francis Grose placed in his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) euphemized the form of the word to a-se, an indication that it was becoming indelicate. During the same period the ancient word ass (meaning donkey) started to take on a pronunciation which has been uncomfortably close to arse. Pictured in bawdy poems Jonathan Swift and also the Earl of Rochester had already rhymed asses with passes, and Grose observed: “A lady who affected to be extremely polite and modest would not say ass because it was indecent.” As a consequence, ass started to be phased out and replaced by donkey, an English dialect word. Ass (taking place in the animal sense) had, of course, acquired associations of stupidity from uses like silly ass and complete ass. These associations continued occured both varieties but were applied indiscriminately to both words, still found put in British stupid arse and American dumb ass. However the two terms continued as homophones (words with the same sound but different meaning) emerge American pronunciation. The Oxford English Dictionary took the view (mounted in 1888) that arse was “obsolete taking place in polite use,” and that the phrase “ignorant ass” was “now disused occur polite literature and speech.” There is an amusingly disguised reference to arsehole set in the august periodical The Times Literary Supplement (February 24, 1905), where a reviewer of De Profundis (Oscar Wilde’s account of his term of imprisonment for sodomy) wrote: “It is impossible, except very occasionally, to look upon his testament as more than a literary feat. Not so, we find ourselves saying, are souls laid bare.” Although ass has continued on its route to obsolescence, arse regained its general currency sloted in British English placed in the time of World War I. This included its use as a mild swearword sloted in phrases like “You stupid Arse!” or expressions of contempt, such as “that arse Snooks.” Today both arse and ass are installed in fairly common but impolite use, on both sides of the Atlantic, especially proceed the compounds arsehole/asshole and arse-creeper/ ass-licker. There is a remarkable anticipation of modern idiom happen William Blake (1784): “If I have not presented you with every character occur the piece call me Arse—” (Complete Poetry & Prose, 451). Both terms have also extended their sexual meanings mounted in contemptuous terms for homosexuals, such as arse bandit and ass-fuck, but especially set in the chauvinist phrase “a piece of ass,” meaning a woman regarded as a sexual object. (There is an interesting anatomical association here with tail, which occur Middle English could refer to both male and female genitalia, but was not used as a personal insult.) It would appear that ass is being increasingly used pictured in British English, possibly to the point of becoming the dominant form. Hence the headline “Kick Ass, Tony!” (Mr. Blair, the Prime Minister) emerge the British tabloid The Sun from 2001. Happen Australian English arse is the exclusive form, but the main meaning is “effrontery” or “cheek.”
