# my ass / my arse



## fdemers

The following thread...

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=952755

...has made me wonder if there is a difference between _ass_ and _arse_, which both seem to be quite common. Is it a regional, Europe-vs-North America type of thing ?


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## LaRue

The origin is diffrent i believe. To put it bluntly; ass is another word for a donkey, arse is your arse =). I think people have, over time, become accostomed to saying them both, and with the same meaning. So, there really isn't a difference anymore.


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## fdemers

LaRue said:


> To put it bluntly; ass is another word for a donkey, arse is your arse =).




I know about the ass-donkey connection, but when people say something like "asskicking", they obviously don't mean donkey-kicking, do they ?
Anyways. I gather from your reply that there isn't any difference, regional or otherwise.

Thanks !


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## Canard

When it refers to "buttocks", you won't hear "arse" in North America, and if you say it, you'll sound British 

Incidentally, "my ass!" is a vulgar way to say "mon oeil !" Weird how we refer to different body parts, isn't it?


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## bloomiegirl

Canard said:


> [...] Incidentally, "my ass!" is a vulgar way to say "mon oeil !" Weird how we refer to different body parts, isn't it?


Whoa! We say "my eye!" in New York. Or at least we used to; now we're much more profane.
But I agree with the arse-British connection, at least to Yankee ears.


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## Canard

"My eye" works too  or "my foot!"


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## panjandrum

You will find a lot more information about this topic in the threads linked at the end of the WR Dictionary entry for *arse*.
In particular:
*Buttocks / Bottom / Arse - How Offensive*


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## Micia93

Canard said:


> When it refers to "buttocks", you won't hear "arse" in North America, and if you say it, you'll sound British
> 
> Incidentally, "my ass!" is a vulgar way to say "mon oeil !" Weird how we refer to different body parts, isn't it?


 
french also uses this different body part in a vulgar way and if "mon oeil" tends to be less used, you will more frequently hear "mon cul" instead !

I must admit that the meaning is different
"mon oeil!" meaning "I don't believe you"
whereas "mon cul!" means : "tu peux toujours courir! "(dsorry I don't know how to translate it !)


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## kellyjelly

From a British/colonial point of view, we have, up til now, always said and written 'arse'.  With emphasis on the ARE sound, which is a lot different to the American 'ass' version, which sounds amusingly coy and inoffensive to us.  ARSE sounds rude and is intended to be so, with no qualification.  It is crude, rough and rustic.
I would suggest a wee bit of caution in interchanging them as the difference is still appreciated by a lot of people.  'Ass' is silly- 'arse' is more offensive.
[…]


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## Gargamelle

I always think of ass/arse as a North America vs. the rest of  the English-speaking world type thing. I have never in my entire life  heard a fellow American say "arse" unless he or she was joking and/or  doing a fake British accent. In the USA, "ass" means "buttocks." It also  means "donkey," but most of the time we say "donkey" when we mean the  animal. "Arse" means "how British people say 'ass.'" It's a word that is  not used but is understood.

How it sounds depends, not surprisingly, on where you're from. KellyJelly says that "arse" sounds crude, rough and rustic in New Zealand, while "ass" sounds coy and inoffensive. To me, "arse" sounds British and "ass" sounds American, and they're equally rude, though not especially rustic. But I'm from the USA, so there you go. 

[…]


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## sound shift

LaRue said:


> I think people have, over time, become accostomed to saying them both, and with the same meaning. So, there really isn't a difference anymore.


I don't say them both. I use the one I have always used: "arse".


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## Gargamelle

....and I always use "ass." I think most native English speakers use one or the other and understand the one they don't use. 

The difference is primarily one of dialect, not semantics, with a footnote about "ass" also being a synonym for "donkey."


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## ShineLikeStars

In my humble opinion:

ass is North American English
arse is British English


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## Gargamelle

Agree. That's the essence of it.


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## kellyjelly

That's exactly what I meant.  To a NZ'r, ass […] sounds light and silly […] to us.  Arse sounds more robust and rude/offensive.


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## bloomiegirl

Agree that […] arse sounds light […] to American ears.  Less offensive, to my mind, than "ass" – probably because "arse" is 1) not commonly used in the USA; 2) sounds British (which it is) and therefore taken to be more refined.


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## Gargamelle

...and also funnier because, well, gee, British is the language of Monty Python, Shakespeare, et al.

Yes, "arse" does sounds less offensive to my American ears (and I dare say to couple hundred million other pairs of American ears) for just the reason BloomieGirl says. When I hear "arse" from a British person, I kinda have to remind myself that it's rude, now that I think of it. When an (American) friend of mine studying in France showed me a list of French slang compiled by some of her (British) friends, the equivalent of "cul" was of course "arse," and I went through a quick mental gymnastics of "are they serious/of course they are." My brain didn't just glide over it. 


So do Anglophone Canadians say "ass" for "cul"?


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## funnyhat

Yes, they also say "ass."  American and Canadian English use pretty much the same vocabulary (though Canadians prefer British spelling).


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## panjandrum

bloomiegirl said:


> Agree that […] arse sounds light […] to  American ears.  Less offensive, to my mind, than "ass" – probably  because "arse" is 1) not commonly used in the USA; 2) sounds British  (which it is) and therefore taken to be more refined.


This is interesting, and important.
kellyjelly explains what I understand to be the BE perspective, which is quite the opposite.


kellyjelly said:


> From a British/colonial point of view, we have, up til now, always said and written 'arse'.  With emphasis on the ARE sound, which is a lot different to the American 'ass' version, which sounds amusingly coy and inoffensive to us.  ARSE sounds rude and is intended to be so, with no qualification.  It is crude, rough and rustic.
> I would suggest a wee bit of caution in interchanging them as the difference is still appreciated by a lot of people.  'Ass' is silly- 'arse' is more offensive.
> […]



So should I conclude that:
In the UK, ass is light, not very offensive, and perhaps even silly.  Arse is crude, rough and rustic.
In the US, ass ..?, but arse sounds British and is taken to be more refined.


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## bloomiegirl

panjandrum said:


> [...]
> So should I conclude that:
> In the UK, ass is light, not very offensive, and perhaps even silly.  Arse is crude, rough and rustic.
> In the US, ass ..?, but arse sounds British and is taken to be more refined.



Sounds right to me...  but then I've already weighed in on this one.


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## Martyn94

I suspect that "ass" was originally meant to be euphemistic: although it was always understood by adults to mean 'backside" (i.e. "arse", the BE word that 18C Americans used before our speech habits drifted apart), it could also mean "donkey" if your children overhead it. 

But (like other attempts of the same sort - such as "mother" for "mother-******") it doesn't soften the strength of the term between adults, as AE speakers have testified, because all adults know what it "really'' means.


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## Kelly B

Be careful of generalizing for North America - I've seen a number of Canadians write _arse_ where a US English speaker would write _ass_. I don't know about the verbal usage in Canada, though, or whether they make the distinction described for NZ.


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## funnyhat

In my experience - at least in the province of Ontario, which I live near and visit frequently - I've always heard people say "ass."  I'm not sure about other provinces.


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## guillaumedemanzac

*Kiss my ass!* doesn't sound offensive to an English speaker - just funny - Why does he want me to kiss his donkey?

*Kiss my arse!* is very offensive. Only possible response is to fight or say "No way, José!" and run.

But strangely enough the pronunciation follows the spelling *ass* with a short a and *arse* with a long aar. Perhaps the Americans were being a little coy in avoiding the vulgar word _and_ pronunciation!


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## frenchifried

Well, this limerick (which may get deleted probably with reason!), illustrates the cross-atlantic difference - but it has to be read with BE prononciation:
There once was a girl from my class 
Who had a remarkable ass
Not rounded and pink
As you'd probably think
It was grey, had long ears and ate grass.


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## guillaumedemanzac

and correct for the northern uk pronunciation of grass, class and ass - all with short A.
Us southerners should write and pronounce with arse, claass, and graass!


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## Martyn94

bloomiegirl said:


> Sounds right to me...  but then I've already weighed in on this one.


It's light if it's said lightly, and not otherwise, in either dialect of English. I must be one of the few here who read American classics like "Cannery Row" or "The Naked and the Dead" when "fug" still stood in for the word that the authors meant: I don't think that many of us were in much doubt - even me, aged 14, which was young in those days.


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## Gargamelle

I assure you that to an American (and we are English speakers) "kiss my ass" sounds very offensive. If a clerk in a store, for instance, said "Kiss my ass!" I would complain to the manager and the clerk would likely be fired. If someone said it to me in a bar, I would throw a drink in his/her face at the very least.

Yes, people say it jokingly, but it is offensive in many contexts.


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## kiwi-ian

Why do the Brits say “arse” for “ass”. Actually it’s the other way around. Arse (German Arsch, Dutch Aars) is the original word but puritanical Americans couldn’t say it, just as they cannot say toilet or loo (so they say bathroom even though they may be no bath, or restroom where you don’t actually take a rest). It’s so ingrained that Americans now think it’s ass whereas that word actually means a donkey.

However if you read many websites, usually American, they start with the premise that both words are equally correct and then try to explain the difference based on differences in pronunciation, often then referring to the rotic ‘r’ and the way southern British pronounce words like ‘bath’. This is totally irrelevant, as the word is Germanic and its cognates in German and Dutch all have an ’r’.

The rest of the English speaking world says ‘arse’, Americans find this too vulgar so use a euphemism and say ‘ass’, which has now come to mean the same thing and puritanical sites such as Yahoo replace ‘ass’ with asterisks which is a pain when writing about wild donkeys (donkeys are all domestic, wild ones are always referred to as asses).


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## funnyhat

frenchifried said:


> Well, this limerick (which may get deleted probably with reason!), illustrates the cross-atlantic difference - but it has to be read with BE prononciation:
> There once was a girl from my class
> Who had a remarkable ass
> Not rounded and pink
> As you'd probably think
> It was grey, had long ears and ate grass.



Why does it need British pronunciation?


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## broglet

The limerick doesn't quite work because in standard British pronunciation class does not rhyme with ass.  What is more, a British listener would not expect an ass to be rounded and pink but would expect it to be grey, have long ears and eat grass. Apart from that it is an excellent illustration, but of what I am not at all sure.


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## guillaumedemanzac

But it does rhyme with standard Northern pronunciation of glass, ass, Madras, pass, bass because the "a" is short and not pronounced like arse, farce, glass, upper claaaaass, grass. Northerners pronounce bath and Barth/hearth/Darth differently and they have problems with the city of Bath! (Use local pronunciation where possible for names because the locals won't understand!)

P.S. Your pronunciation of pronounciation also gives us problems but we don't pronounce it prononciation.   Looks weird ?????  (It sounds weird too !!!!!).


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## funnyhat

broglet said:


> The limerick doesn't quite work because in standard British pronunciation class does not rhyme with ass.  What is more, a British listener would not expect an ass to be rounded and pink but would expect it to be grey, have long ears and eat grass. Apart from that it is an excellent illustration, but of what I am not at all sure.



That's why I was wondering why it would have to be said with British pronunciation.  To an American the joke works perfectly.


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