I think the hardest word to truly master has been the word, “ass.”
I’ve been trying to write a whole dictionary about just “ass.”
This is Ismo, a Finnish comedian who struggled with the nuances of English after moving to the United States. In particular, he had trouble learning how to use the word “ass.”
Ismo’s frustrations resonated with people: this 2018 set on Conan about his “ass” struggles has over 4 million views on YouTube. We’re going to show highlights, but you can clickhereto watch the full routine first.
Let’s look at what Ismo has to say about “ass.” His main point is that “ass” can fit in any sentence, and mean almost anything. For some reason, it seems exempt from standard rules of language.
We’re going to investigate whether ass is truly the most complicated word. Along the way, we’ll see why slang in general can be so confusing (and enriching).
Throughout the bit, Ismo uses “ass” 34 times, in a variety of contexts. By doing so, he conveys ten unique meanings with the same word.
But Ismo’s ass exegesis is, to use his words, “just the tip of the ass-berg.” Under the surface are more than 200 unique historical usages of “ass”documented by Jonathon Green. Of course,Green’sis also just the tip of a much larger ass-berg – a catalog of slang will never be exhaustive, because new usages are invented every day. Some of these novel definitions will become widely used, with a select few crossing the rubicon into a standard English dictionary. But the vast majority will live and die in obscurity, eventually becoming historical artifacts in a lexicographer’s collection.
It’s no surprise that “ass” has accrued so many meanings. The word sits in the center of the potent slang venn diagram – it’s related to sex, it’s considered a curse word, and it’s metaphorically evocative. “Ass” is not so much exceptional as it is representative of the slang ethos.
We can look at other popular slang words to see how these features help terms accrue additional senses . Words like “fuck” and “dick”share similar characteristics with“ ass, ”lending a breadth of meaning particular to the sexually explicit and obscene.
Words like “dog”And”cat”aren ‘ t curse words, but they draw upon a trove of evocative animal metaphors to form new usages. The same metaphorical heft contributes to the varied usages of sensory words like “black”and“red. ”
As it turns out, “ass” is not the most complicated word in English, at least according to the number of different definitions listed in Green’s. That dubious honor goes to the word “shit, ”which boasts 295 senses, complete with all sorts of befuddling contradictions. A “piece of shit” is bad, but “the shit?” That’s good!
The reason “ass” and “shit” are difficult words to pin down is that slang is fundamentally different than standard English. Slang is democratic; there are no gatekeepers to impose restrictions. Learning how to use “ass” might seem complicated, but the story of slang is pretty simple: it’s slippery, messy, transgressive, clever, cruel, confusing, industrious, evocative, vulgar, adaptable. In Green’s words: “Slang is humanity at its most human.”
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