An aside, but one of my more fun small pranks involved two fortune cookies in the office circa 2007.<p>I extracted the real fortunes, and inserted two of my own. When a friend dropped by, I handed him one and took the other.<p>His fortune read "You are an asshat".<p>Which surprised him somewhat, differing as it did from the usual fare.<p>What blew him away was when I cracked my cookie and withdrew my fortune: "Your friend is an asshat".
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)<p>Ironically in a similar context, a bunch of punk rockers talking about someone in a band we didn't like!<p>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.
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".<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>He was meant to call Michael Bolton a "no-talent-ass clown", but delivered the line as "no-talent ass-clown".<p>Or something like that. And now assclown is a thing.
> the etymological note we have describes the linking of ass and hat as “seemingly nonsensical”<p>What? It's obviously a reference to having your head up your ass, thus turning your ass into a hat.
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."
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.
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.
I think its usage on the internet grew as an acceptable alternative to the banned word "asshole" on various message boards.<p><a href="https://ksot.net/banned/" rel="nofollow">https://ksot.net/banned/</a><p>"Asshat" also gives you plausible deniability for sneaking in "ass" + the past tense of "shit". That's how I've always read it.
There's a Finnish stand-up comedian who also pondered on the many possibilities of the English word "ass". This is him on Conan's talk show:
<a href="https://youtu.be/RAGcDi0DRtU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RAGcDi0DRtU</a><p>Funny enough, he mentions the same things the article does, especially the end of it.
> <i>the etymological note we have describes the linking of ass and hat as “seemingly nonsensical”</i><p>I always assumed an asshat is a person with their head up their ass, i.e. they are wearing it as a hat.
I first encountered this term while playing Kingdom of Loathing. <a href="https://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Asshat" rel="nofollow">https://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Asshat</a> which puts it at somewhere in the 2005 or so timeframe when I encountered that term.
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.
> It occupies the space between assez and asshead.<p>The fact that <i>asshead</i>, a word I can honestly say I've never heard used in any English dialect, merited inclusion before asshat, a word I've heard a dozen times this last week, boggles my mind.
> There is a profound difference between being in possession of a “sweet-ass hat” and a “sweet asshat”<p>Someone at MW has read: <a href="https://xkcd.com/37/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/37/</a>
Here's and interesting and fun take on similar words:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/RAGcDi0DRtU?t=120" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RAGcDi0DRtU?t=120</a>
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.
In case you need asshat quantified...<p>> Statistics for asshat<p>> Look-up Popularity<p>><p>> Top 6% of words<p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asshat" rel="nofollow">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asshat</a>
My favorite occurrence of "asshat" was by Metafilter moderator jessamin in 2006 justifying her decision to remove a comment. A bad argument made in good faith deserves a response, but trolling does not. Jessamin said that when she deletes a troll comment she didn't see the necessity in writing a letter explaining why:<p><i>Dear asshat, you're being an asshat. I deleted your asshat comment. Please stop the asshattery. Love, jessamin</i><p>This non-letter was set to music by her Metafilter co-moderator cortex: <a href="https://music.metafilter.com/480/Please-Stop-The-Asshattery" rel="nofollow">https://music.metafilter.com/480/Please-Stop-The-Asshattery</a>
> 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<p>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.<p><a href="https://consciousstyleguide.com/general/" rel="nofollow">https://consciousstyleguide.com/general/</a>