[HN Gopher] Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
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Some notes on 'asshat' (2018)
Author : hashamali
Score : 98 points
Date : 2022-05-11 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.merriam-webster.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.merriam-webster.com)
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _the etymological note we have describes the linking of ass and
| hat as "seemingly nonsensical"_
|
| I always assumed an asshat is a person with their head up their
| ass, i.e. they are wearing it as a hat.
| Wistar wrote:
| My late father-in-law and his buddies used the expression "uglier
| than a hat full of assholes," and I always assumed that "asshat"
| came from that. Guess I was wrong.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Here's and interesting and fun take on similar words:
|
| https://youtu.be/RAGcDi0DRtU?t=120
| tlb wrote:
| > the etymological note we have describes the linking of ass and
| hat as "seemingly nonsensical"
|
| What? It's obviously a reference to having your head up your ass,
| thus turning your ass into a hat.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| A minor issue with that reasoning is that it doesn't explain
| why you might use the word asshat to refer to a person who is
| wearing an asshat. Asshatter would make a bit more sense, akin
| to brownnoser. On the other hand, I guess words like fatass
| have this same problem of equating the person with something
| the person possesses.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > 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".
| emptybits wrote:
| I 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.
| [deleted]
| golem14 wrote:
| The article compares with a 15th century word ass-head, but IMO
| ass-hat is really meaning arse-head, and ass-head refers to the
| animal, making an ass-head closer to a stupid person, less a
| detestable and disagreeable one.
| [deleted]
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Validation at last!
| pkamb wrote:
| I think its usage on the internet grew as an acceptable
| alternative to the banned word "asshole" on various message
| boards.
|
| https://ksot.net/banned/
|
| "Asshat" also gives you plausible deniability for sneaking in
| "ass" + the past tense of "shit". That's how I've always read it.
| pohl wrote:
| Another 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.
| sph wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/37/
| atoav wrote:
| Of course there is an xkcd about it
| Tao332 wrote:
| Vintage xkcd from the grid paper days.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Confirmed by OP:
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does-assc...
| OJFord wrote:
| Not that it was not the intended reading though, unless I'm
| missing it, just that the term likely came from the film?
| wavefunction wrote:
| nah Office resonates because it MIRRORED real life en verite,
| not the other way around. That's always been Mike Judge's
| strength, casting the actual as fantastic as it really is for
| better or often worse.
|
| we were saying assclown or azzclown before the movie but it hit
| so sweetly thus
| shagie wrote:
| I first encountered this term while playing Kingdom of Loathing.
| https://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Asshat which puts
| it at somewhere in the 2005 or so timeframe when I encountered
| that term.
| Tao332 wrote:
| In my memory you had to craft it from two half-asses, but it
| looks like they were really called bum cheeks.
|
| I remember first encountering the term on b3ta around the same
| time.
| leoc wrote:
| For my money it probably started as a play on or corruption of
| 'brass-hat', the old unflattering slang word for a senior
| military officer.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > In the case of pronoun usage, it really comes down to: Are you
| being a nice person or an asshat?" -- Steve Kleinedler
| (interviewed by Sarah Grey), Conscious Style Guide
| (consciousstyleguide.com), "Conscious Language in the American
| Heritage Dictionary," 22 Feb. 2018
|
| I had no idea this guide for not being an asshat existed. That's
| pretty interesting and could help a lot of would-be asshats who
| don't feel comfortable hiding in actions-not-words territory
| anymore.
|
| https://consciousstyleguide.com/general/
| Veen wrote:
| [deleted]
| bitwize wrote:
| Veen wrote:
| li2uR3ce wrote:
| In case you need asshat quantified...
|
| > Statistics for asshat
|
| > Look-up Popularity
|
| >
|
| > Top 6% of words
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asshat
| samatman wrote:
| Is the etymology actually obscure? I seem to recall it gaining
| currency in the warblog era (late but not lamented) and it's a
| way of saying someone has their head up their ass. They're
| wearing their ass as a hat.
|
| I remember this being explained a lot in various comment sections
| where folks would yell at each other about the war. It's hard for
| me to see this as folk etymology since afaik it's where the word
| itself comes from. Someone should ask Instapundit.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| I first encountered "asshat" in the context of network
| security: there are white hats, who are motivated by ethics and
| social responsibility. There are black hats, who are motivated
| by personal gain and seem to lack a sense of morality. Then
| there are asshats, who don't care about anything other than
| amusing themselves at other people's expense.
|
| I have absolutely no idea of this is the origin of the term, or
| if it just fit there perfectly.
| livinginfear wrote:
| My impression was always that the term connoted one who was
| wearing an ass as a hat, i.e. has their "head up their/an(?)
| ass". Which as many would already know is an English idiom
| connoting someone of poor manners.
| zaps wrote:
| Jamey Jasta the poor man's Mike Muir
| zdw wrote:
| > There is a profound difference between being in possession of a
| "sweet-ass hat" and a "sweet asshat"
|
| Someone at MW has read: https://xkcd.com/37/
| function_seven wrote:
| 37? I can't believe it was that long ago. (Didn't even click
| your link, I know what it is :)
| bitwize wrote:
| Thought it came from Jeff K. on Something Awful, back when
| Something Awful was good.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| This is the second Usenet-borne word I've seen enter the
| dictionary recently. I forget what the other one was, though I
| remember it had to do with graffiti and was popularized by rather
| than created on Usenet. I think we're going to see this more and
| more over the next decade or three as slow-burning words from the
| early internet stumble into memes and discourse around major
| events.
| flobosg wrote:
| 'Unfriend' is another one.
|
| > (...) though I remember it had to do with graffiti and was
| popularized by rather than created on Usenet
|
| That one's probably _king_ as a verb (" _kinging_ New York").
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I don't think so. This one had to do with a memorial for
| someone who was murdered.
| [deleted]
| xoxxala wrote:
| I'm doing my part! I use "plonk" once or twice a day, which is
| probably more than the average person.
| casion wrote:
| The 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 words have an etymology which predates
| written use significantly due to the "class" of people who use
| that word. This certainly seems to be a minor case at least.
| jameshart wrote:
| There are certainly academics who collect and study spoken
| language corpora, not just written - it's very much a matter of
| what gets collected and catalogued though. The fact that early
| citations here are from Usenet speaks to the availability and
| search ability of that corpus much more than to its role in the
| origination of written speech. Transcripts of IRC and MUDs and
| aim chats are not collected and indexed, so they don't get
| referenced.
|
| Similarly with spoken corpora it tends to be things like
| interviews with old people created to preserve dialect
| recordings, or material from local radio news - rather than
| random conversations among young people.
|
| I guess by virtue of 'tape in the studio just kept rolling'
| there might be rather more recorded examples of band members
| chatting away over the years than of other similar aged groups.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's pretty much universal. Etymologists and lexicographers
| know that most words were in use for some time before being
| written -- anywhere from years to centuries. They try to make
| inferences by other means, as best they can.
|
| They gradually expand the corpus they can search. A lot of
| words that are attributed to Shakespeare are gradually finding
| earlier sources, often in manuscripts. They knew all along that
| Shakespeare wasn't the first person to use a word (a common
| myth), but that his works were widely printed and thus
| survived.
|
| Those manuscripts still don't include spoken usages, and show
| only the use by the class of people who could write. But it is
| solid data, before they go off into more tenuous hypotheses.
| dang wrote:
| Can you post the clip somewhere? That would be interesting, and
| apparently of historical significance!
| markbnj wrote:
| It's been a long time, but I seem to recall the term being used
| to describe a specific animation performed over the head of a
| fallen enemy when playing MMOs like Asheron's Call or Dark Age of
| Camelot, which I played a lot of circa 2001 or so.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I've always associated this word with fark.com, I remember it
| being used frequently on that site around 2000.
| rmatt2000 wrote:
| Threads like this are why I come to HN.
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