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2009-07-16 -Short Attention Span Theater-

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Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2009-07-16 16:55|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top

#1 a modern version of this

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2009-07-16 17:10|| 2009-07-16 17:10|| Front Page Top

#2 What has happened is an American slang term has recently come into common use in England.

When the street was named, people would have thought a butt was a water barrel.

Posted by Phil_B 2009-07-16 17:44|| 2009-07-16 17:44|| Front Page Top

#3 Yes, but water butts don't really associate with "holes", unless you have a now-non-functional water butt & a rapidly drying pool of mud around it.

Anyways, before "butt" meant ass it meant "target of a joke", and that meaning's contemporary with the water-barrel meaning. There was no point in time when "Butt Hole Road" was a particularly harmless or desirable address, if you ask me.

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2009-07-16 18:42|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/]">[http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/] 2009-07-16 18:42|| Front Page Top

#4 I understand Pelosi Drive was a proposed alternative, but was scuttled as the *snicker* meanings were too close

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2009-07-16 19:07|| 2009-07-16 19:07|| Front Page Top

#5 Regarding the word "butt", Etymology Online says:

"In sense of 'human posterior' it is recorded from 1450".

The "barrel" meaning dates to 1385.

Would be interesting to know when the street was named, but given the proximity of the two dates it's looking like Butt Hole might always have been intended to mean Butt Hole.

Posted by Iblis 2009-07-16 19:13|| 2009-07-16 19:13|| Front Page Top

#6 It could be worse. The last Gropecunt Lane in England disappeared in 1561.

Posted by Eric Jablow">Eric Jablow 2009-07-16 19:39|| 2009-07-16 19:39|| Front Page Top

#7 butt also means an archery target - probably from the practice of using a barrel as a target - and a grouse shooting position - which may be the origin of this name.

Posted by Phil_B 2009-07-16 19:41|| 2009-07-16 19:41|| Front Page Top

#8 Yes, but water butts don't really associate with "holes", unless you have a now-non-functional water butt & a rapidly drying pool of mud around it.

Actually...you would be wrong. Old fashioned barrels were filled through a hole in the side of the barrel. This hole was also called the "bung".

I kid you not. Lots of colorful colloquialisms related to barrels, bungs and such. Where do you think the phrase "over a barrel" came from?

Posted by Waldemar Slainter9268 2009-07-16 20:50|| 2009-07-16 20:50|| Front Page Top

#9 Correction, the hole was called the bung hole, the bung was the stopper that was driven in to plug the hole. Lovely language, English. ;)

Posted by Waldemar Slainter9268 2009-07-16 20:54|| 2009-07-16 20:54|| Front Page Top

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