A FEW years ago a viral video about a beached whale poked fun at Kiwi English. “I’m beached as!”, the whale cried. The dialogue was, of course, exaggerated for (mostly Australians’) amusement. But as with most caricature, it did pick up on real traits. The intensive “as” is a distinctive feature of slang in New Zealand and Australia: a great movie might be “sweet as”, and a brisk night “cold as”, for example.
The usage seems to have originated as the front end of a comparison, as in “sweet as pie” or “cold as Siberia” (or, possibly, some more vulgar similes). Uses range from the idiomatic (especially “sweet as”) to the one-off: "as" can, in principle, follow any adjective or, indeed, participle (including “beached”). The construction has not yet made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, in which the entry for “as” already comprises 35 meanings. The Macquarie Dictionary, an Australian publication, has an entry for the intensifier "as" but offers no clue when it first appeared. In fairness, there is little research on the usage. A short paper in English Today is the seminal work.
When I lived Down Under, at first I mistook the austral “as” for the more familiar North American intensifier, “-ass”, as in "sweet-ass". It too has yet to be recognised by the OED (though the dictionary does present a rather fun list of other "asses"). Merriam-Webster, an American dictionary, duly includes it as a postpositive intensive. It gives the example “fancy-ass” and claims, without elaboration, that the usage was first attested around 1920.
“Ass” used this way is certainly common nowadays. The idiom was written about as early as 1992. It appears in the form "cold-ass" in the song “Thrift Shop”, which currently tops American pop charts. The movie "Kick-Ass" topped the box office in 2010. But it is still considered a bit naughty. Last month news outlets like NPR were tickled by a proposed new “kick-ass” slogan for Kentucky.
Mistaking “as” for “-ass” could thus be forgiven. Both idioms are unusually similar. And yet they do not seem to be etymologically related. Besides being less vulgar, “as” is much younger than “-ass”. The origins of “as” as a truncated simile are clearer. They are pronounced differently. Most likely it is a mere coinicidence. After all, slang abounds in intensifiers—super, real, hella, you name it. Either way, the convergence is certainly interesting as.
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I am rather surprised that fancy-ass dates from about 1920. I thought it at least 50 years older, alas with no supporting evidence whatsoever. But I assume it is rather difficult to date what would have been off-color constructions since all we have is print.
Sweet as, bro. But I'm buggered if I know why some smart-arse is mixing it up with smart-ass. Got me stumped there, eh?
[And for the record: 'buggered' as in "she's buggered, mate" simply means something doesn't go, or someone got a rough deal. This was determined in a NZ Advertising Tribunal decision considering an advertisement in which a sheep dog falls off the back of a (Japanese) ute into the mud.]
This was bonza
I don't think the use of "ass", which is part of a complete word using "ass" as a suffix, is at all like "as", a separate word inviting the completion of a comparison. "as" can be much more creative and fun. It's an oral pointer to an ellipsis for the hearer to fill in as imagination may run. To the extent that the substitution is stereotypical and automatic, it will be a bore. But that will have no effect on its popularity. It will take an overuse of the construction itself to make people drop it.
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No doubt, it's slangy-ass as
Make me think of truncated rhyming slang. One essential human trait is we abstract the shared attributes in language and make the shared part something of its own. The examples like "sweet as pie" become rubrics which not only share the literal words but the element of conveying comparison. I'm not an expert in language developments but it seems we tend to shift when meaning shifts; we move toward using only the word "as" because the process by which we compare has become stale so the meaning in the comparisons can be better conveyed by the abstracted picture. I doubt one happens without the other: without the meaning in "sweet as pie" losing import we would not shift to "as" on its own.
My first thought was that the Kiwi intensifier is just short for "as could be" or "as can be" as in
"Once upon a time I drank a little wine
Was as happy as could be, happy as could be"
from the 70s pop song Get Down by Gilbert O'Sullivan.
(Can't get the tune out of my head.)
I'm from western Michigan, and I commonly hear (and use) "as what" as an intensifier, as in "Michigan winters are cold as what". Related?
I am a complete outsider here, but isn't what is happening here just a shortening of "as hell" ie, I am beached as hell, it is cold as hell, etc.. Pretty common saying in North America, just shortened for some reason?
I believe I found an "as ass" compond usage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aCc-JUN5po
The comparison is kick-ass as!
My understanding was that "kick-ass" means that whever it is metaphorically kicks its rivals in their bottoms - it gives them an ass-kicking.
And I'd assumed "fancy-ass" was merely a more specific way of calling someone an ass/arse, saying they have ideas above their station.
"Kick-ass" isn't an example of the intensifier; as far as I know nobody describes something as "kick". "Huge-ass" is a popular example, though. "Move your huge-ass SUV out of the passing lane, if you please, kind sir."
Again, "huge-ass" is saying your SUV has an overly large bottom, presumably one suggestive of greed and over-indulgence.
better with a rolling "r", "move your fat arse SUV out of the passing lane, if you please, kind Sir". :)
Depends a little on what you consider slang which is often, mostly, used to deceive (as in Rhyming Slang)