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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I used “butt load” all my life until I was about 40 and heard someone say “boatload” for the first time. As in, “We got a butt load of candy this Halloween.”
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I’m pretty sure the original is ‘boat load’, since it takes a lot (think cargo ships) to fill a boat.
However, since I first heard ‘butt load’ several years back, i have heard ‘butt’ used for emphasis as an apparent copy of its use in “butt-load” (a big load) to “butt-year” (a long time). Example: “When is Heroes coming back? I haven’t seen a new episode in a butt-year.”
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I have also defintely heard the term “ass-load” used as well. I’m not sure which direction this is evolving, but it’s possible that it all came from boat load.
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I’ve always thought “butt load” is a wry reshaping of boatload. (It’s also sort of gross if you think about it! Or at least that is what I thought the first time I heard it.) I don’t think, historically, the term would have been butt load. If it was, what would that “butt” be? Boatload makes perfect sense.
In relation to “butt” being used as an intensifier, “butt ugly” is a common example of that.
Last edited by JonW719 (2008-04-28 17:45:48)
Feeling quite combobulated.
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A butt is a large cask. I am also reminded of Flann O’Brien’s hilarious parody of Irish epic in the novel At Swim-Two-Birds, where the prospective hero must carry many things in the seat of his pants, including “two odorous prickle-backed hogs” and “six arm-bearing warriors”.
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Interesting, SkookumPete. With that in mind, it is possible that both terms came about independent of one another. But I had never heard the term “butt load” until perhaps 10 years ago, whereas “boatload” is one I grew up hearing and using (it’s also in the dictionary dating from the late 1600s, referring to nautical cargo).
Feeling quite combobulated.
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I thought we had this one mentioned before:
Shitloads/Shedloads by RGBunce Contribute! 5 2006-10-10 14:29:47 by Sandi
Either in the above thread or elsewhere…
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we always used the term “shit load”—it’s not that big a stretch to end up w/ “butt load.”
(by “we,” I mean my brothers and I, as kids)
Last edited by TootsNYC (2008-04-29 15:13:14)
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JonW719 wrote:
“In relation to “butt” being used as an intensifier, “butt ugly” is a common example of that.”
Like Jon, I think “butt” is used as an intensifier, although I don’t doubt that it originates from “boat.” I find myself (in the South, of course) sometimes saying something is “butt easy.”
—Lisa
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