Several years ago I was listening to KROQ a (mainstream) Alternative music station in L.A. I don’t remember who started it, but on the Kevin & Bean Show someone made up the word “jackhole”. The intent was to have a word that “sounded obscene, but isn’t”. I remember K&B reading e-mail from listeners who were also script-writers, and that these listeners said they would use “jackhole” in their scripts. I did indeed hear the Kevin & Bean Show’s made-up word on a couple of sitcoms. Then I heard it in films. I just heard it again last night when I was watching something on TV.
So has “jackhole” actually made it into the lexicon where you live?
Incidentally, K&B were “outraged” that a particular person (whose name I do not recall) was a “star”. They said that if this person could be a star, they could “make a potato a star!” So they did a schtick on their show highlighting their potato. As it happens, the Potato did make it on-screen in a couple of sit-coms.
It’s also the name of the production company that made ‘The Man Show’ back when it was Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla. That’s the only context I ever heard the word.
That’s also the only place I’ve ever heard it, and I hope it stays that way.
Well, it’s jackass + asshole, so it’s not just getting by on sounding obscene. The ass is implied. (There’s something you’re not likely to read again.)
Not according to Kimmel, at the time he coined the word. “Jack” is not obscene, nor is “hole”. His intent was, as I mentioned and which he said at the time, was to make a non-obscene word that sounded obscene. “Jackhole” sounds obscene because people assume that “ass” is implied. But from what Kimmel said, the word itself was not obscene. (Which is why I put “sounded obscene, but isn’t” in quotes – because this is what I remember him saying on the Kevin & Bean Show.)