Plenty of 'em around. I work with some. I’m related to a few. I’ve even been called one once or twice.
What, exactly, constitutes an “asshole”, though? Under what circumstance does one attain asshole-dom?
That’s “assholicity”
Waste
Flick Lives!
When one is full of shit?
Well, it’s a rather negative term. If you take a mammal and remove all the protoplasm and horny matter, and concentrate on its dorsal terminus, removing finally all the feces, you end up with something like that. It’s nature is not too clear, however, if your Webpage has a wallpaper background. Occasionally, such an entity has been found to post to forums on the Internet.
Ray (has the wrong background to produce a clear answer the question)
Remember a magazine called THE NATIONAL LAMPOON? Back in the pre-ONION days, us old-timers thought it was pretty durned funny; it kept us amused while we churned the butter and combed down the horses. The following has stuck in my mind for many, many years:
About twenty-three or twenty-four years ago the LAMPOON ran an article in their faux-newspaper about a terrible new drug that was making inroads with the university population. The drug was called “assholio.”
They ran before-and-after photos of an assholio abuser…Picture One was an ordinary male 20something of the time (lots of hair, droopy moustache); Picture Two was John Erlichman.
They also included a description of a youth who had suffered through a terrible assholio overdose: “Upon awakening three days later, he found that he had stolen his best friend’s girl, cost his father his job, and earned a law degree.”
Uke
<font color=“red”> To become an asshole, Young Grasshopper, one must be willing to degrade one’s self. One must be willing to demean one’s self. One must…
vote Republican.(gasp of horror & disgust)</font>
Attention C#3!The inside of your musty head is a exercise wheel;
in which two gerbils, Vanity and Credulity by
name, tussle fruitlessly over the walnut that
represents your banal & pointless existance.
One person’s asshole is another persons best friend.
Hello. My name is Captain Crude, and I’m an Asshole.
Everyone: “Hi, Captain Crude!”
I am an asshole because I often open my yap and say something I think is witty without first considering how others will feel about it. In my quest to be the comic relief in the story of my own life, I alienate myself from others.
I can’t resist a good straight line. Nor can I turn down an opportunity to pun. Off-color comments and crude statements are a specialty. While this can make for lively conversation, it also tends to grate on the nerves after a while. Ask anybody who’s gotten to this point with me on more than one occasion: I’m an asshole.
Another part of the problem is that I’m a good enough actor that people don’t always recognize when I’m kidding; my sarcasm flies right past them.
Also, I’m a bit of a know-it-all. Nobody on the Straight Dope boards is immune from this, but I’m pretty bad about it. I do, in fact, know a little about everything, I’m well-eductaed, and I love trivia. The unwashed masses of the world hate people like me. I’m not sure I blame them. I don’t mean to be an asshole. I just have trouble keeping my mouth shut sometimes.
That’s all I have to say on that. For now.
–Da Cap’n
As a scholar of the English language I have found that profanity falls into three major categories: sexual, religious, and scatological. “Asshole” would be classed as sexual because it is so closely related to the profane/slang terms for other, generally clothed, unmentionable in polite society, parts of the body.
As with “asshole” the following body parts can also be used to describe people: “ass, tit, boob, prick, dick, dink, cunt, twat, pussy”.
Oral tradition has tended to spread a general agreement on a vague psychological profile for humanoids being identified by one of these words. For example a “prick” is generally someone who aggressively does something bad to you, “asses” and “boobs” are brainless lumps of flesh, “pussies” are soft, and so on.
The question is what defines a human “asshole”? I would suggest that it is someone who, when they open their mouth and make noise, make the people around them uncomfortable, and “assholes” are usually best ignored and treated as if they were not present. It seems to be very similar to the term “troll” I see bandied about so much on this board.
An asshole is anyone going faster than me or slower than me on the highway.
Cap’n Crude: I don’t think if you try to be funny all the time it makes you an asshole. As long as you are funny most of the time, you’re doing your job. I feel I’m the same way. The world needs humor, else we’d all be commiting suicide. And that’s just no good.
A troll is someone who says something outrageous in order to get some kind of response. (Get it? He’s trolling for responses the way a fisherman trolls for a bite.) Trolls tend to be assholes.
Anyone who thinks having an MBA degree is an indicator of education.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
So I’m driving to work this morning, and I’m in a long line of cars moving towards the freeway onramp intersection, and as the line moves again a youngish guy in an Oldsmobile cuts in from the right-turn-only lane beside me and gets between me and the car in front. I hadn’t really moved yet, so it wasn’t too dangerous, and it was possible that the guy had only just turned into that lane and then immediately moved over (rather than trying to cheat forward), and I didn’t feel like getting stressed, so I thought nothing more of it.
We get to the next light and are just going up over the highway towards the onramp, and someone else comes straight through the right-turn-only lane and tries to squeeze in in front of that guy. The guy in the Olds does not like that! He swerves slightly into the oncoming lane and accelerates, trying to squeeze the newcomer into the rail. The newcomer stops, and as the Olds-driver goes by he makes sure to make eye-contact and flips that driver the bird. Later, as we merge onto the highway, the Olds driver makes a slalom lane-change into a gap in the second lane and takes off.
So, considering that there is considerable overlap among the categories Al Zheimers listed, I figure that the guy in the Olds was a prick, a boob, AND an asshole, while the guy who came straight through the mandatory turn lane was demonstrably no more than a boob, but may have been an asshole, too. (And Diver, we were all going the same speed, so even that doesn’t…OH, you were JOKING!)
I guess you can call me UncleAsshole now. I consistently vote republican. My theory though is taken straight from P.J. O’Rourke, “Democrats complain that gov’t doesn’t work, and then Republicans get elected and prove it.”
All in all though, I’ll take the Republican hypocrisy over the Democratic.
“The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.” - Humphrey Bogart
Typically I reach Asshole-dom after about 5 beers, or so I’ve been told!!
I feel more like I do now than I did when I got here.
It used to amaze me that wealth seemed to equal assholehood. Not any more. Money seems to bring with it a bully-like attitude. Neener neener, my wallets bigger than yours… In my neighborhood we’ve got a vietnam-era ex-marine with megabucks living next to us middle-class drones. We’ve had to put up with intimidation, threats, etc., for 8 years.
Da crude one:
Maybe you need a higher-grade duct tape that stays stuck. 
Well, I think an AH is really the sort who, after sticking it to you, gives it a healthy twist.
Someone who fails at being funny, of course, doesn’t begin to meet that criterion. He may be thought of as an “ass”, but an ass, in the Queen’s English, is another animal and not a part of the human body, as is an arse, and the etymology is distinctive, right? I note that my dictionary says the body part ass/arse derived from the OE ears. Sounds to me like somebody back there between OE and ME didn’t know one end of himself from the t’other and got the cart before the ass. (Well, OK ears → ass. . .I suppose; but ears → buttocks?)
Ray (Do you hear something down there?)
when someone messes with you intentionally or hurts you intentionally. This to me constitutes being called an asshole. or when someone opens their mouth about something they shouldnt and they do it just to get you pissed off…thats an asshole…
infact have you ever heard the “asshole” song? if not and you REALLY wanna know what a REAL asshole is listen to it sometime.
Love Always,
Heather Lee
XheatherleeX@aol.com
Heatherlee, is that the “Asshole” song by Denis Leary? A classic!!