Hyphen Ass
When did “-ass” enter our lexicon?
We can all think of a few bad-ass movie heroes or villains. And we all know a smart-ass when we see one. I supposed smart-ass came out smart-alack, so that may be the first incidence of what I call “Hyphen Ass Syndrome.”
Some people might bemoan the dumbing down of American culture and complain that we just don’t have the vocabulary previous generations enjoyed. Some might see it as evidence how inured we have become to swearing. We all know people who can string together slightly coherent sentences prominently featuring the F-word…
Its weird how “-ass” has grown in popularity. I was in a store a while back when I heard the twenty-something clerk chat with the slightly older clerk about something in TV the previous night:
“Did you watch (whatever it was)?” She asked.
“No.”
“Aww, you missed a good-ass (program.)”
“Good-ass”? Hmm. Is that the opposite of bad-ass? That got me thinking: what other kinds of Hyphenated Posteriors have I head of? Besides the aforementioned, there are…
- sick-ass
- cool-ass
- dumb-ass
- half-ass
- kick-ass
- weird-ass
- happy-ass
So that young clerk could have described the episode like this: ” So this bad-ass was following this dumb-ass through some weird-ass building…”
I love the English language. It’s so kick-ass!
August 1st, 2009 at 10:57 am
When you first brought this up, I was reminded of Donnie Darko (which you never saw, sorry) and that scene in the beginning where Donnie makes up this swear word (that I can’t remember) that makes no sense. I think people just come up with whatever to show their feelings and I think that’s part of where the language changes in trying to come up with a bad-ass word (sorry, I had to) to reflect exactly what they have in mind.