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.
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.
Some of the earliest recorded usages are found in court transcripts, where they wrote things down verbatim. One case from 1310 involved Roger F--kebythenavele. https://www.google.com/search?q=roger+by-the-navele
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And I first encountered it (2004?), exclusively verbally, as a way to soften asshole. As far as I could tell and assumed to this day, it was taken up primarily aesthetically (sounds nicer than asshole and looks nicer in text, literally aesthetics here).
Still, it had the same implication of someone who is sort of oblivious to other people (asshole) but in a somewhat endearing or amusing or not all that serious a way.
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.
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.
nah Office resonates because it MIRRORED real life en vérité, 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
As a French, I have another explanation. The french equivalent to a "dunce cap" is "bonnet d'âne". "bonnet" means "cap" and "âne" means "donkey", so "bonnet d'âne" literally translates into "asshat".
It is probably not the true origin of the word, but it is not impossible either. Also, words can have several origins.
Multiple origins are probably more common than we think. We tend to be biased to want to see singular causes of things, but language is often a murky soup full of feedback cycles.
In the example you gave, if it is not an origin, it could at least be a lingual context that supports the expression, because it does not contradict it.
Language evolution must be full of nuances like that, that we can barely observe.
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.
Whether you’re talking about The Crown as the queen, The Whitehouse as the executive branch, or the pen being mightier than the sword, metonymy is a common linguistic device that uses a part as a metaphor for the whole.
> 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".
First 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."
Readit News
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
To me, this evokes an image of wearing one's ass as a hat. I love the ridiculousness of picturing that.
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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.
I have absolutely no idea of this is the origin of the term, or if it just fit there perfectly.
Still, it had the same implication of someone who is sort of oblivious to other people (asshole) but in a somewhat endearing or amusing or not all that serious a way.
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.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does-assc...
we were saying assclown or azzclown before the movie but it hit so sweetly thus
Ass/clown.
What? It's obviously a reference to having your head up your ass, thus turning your ass into a hat.
As a French, I have another explanation. The french equivalent to a "dunce cap" is "bonnet d'âne". "bonnet" means "cap" and "âne" means "donkey", so "bonnet d'âne" literally translates into "asshat".
It is probably not the true origin of the word, but it is not impossible either. Also, words can have several origins.
In the example you gave, if it is not an origin, it could at least be a lingual context that supports the expression, because it does not contradict it.
Language evolution must be full of nuances like that, that we can barely observe.
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".
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