Weltarsch
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The first six panels of today's SMBC:
And the last two:
The mouse-over title: "It's a beautiful-ass concept."
The aftercomic:
Interestingly, the Wiktionary entry lists the literal meaning in third place, presumably because current frequency of use is the ordering principle?
In contrast, the OED puts the literal meaning first, since it orders senses by age —
to attack or harm (a person) physically, esp. in order to punish or subdue; to beat up. Hence: to defeat or humiliate; to exhaust or tire out.
…with citations back to 1741:
1741 Yes (says he) you are a d——d, impudent, stinking, cursed, confounded Jade, and I have a great mind to kick your A——. (H. Fielding, Shamela vi. 13)
1855 I don't care a damn; if the adjutant comes near me I'll kick his arse. (Allen's Indian Mail 29 January 41/1)
The metaphorical sense "to act roughly or aggressively; to be powerful or assertive" is only traced back to 1977, and is not distinguished from the (even more abstract) sense that Wiktionary glosses as "To be very impressive".
Following up on the "beautiful-ass" modifier in the mouse-over title:
"New intensifiers", 8/16/2004
"The intensified crack of dawn", 6/7/2005
"Is is a prosodic-ass constraint?", 8/25/2011
"Can "[adjective]-ass" occur predicatively?", 11/18/2013
"Ignoble-ass citation practices", 11/12/2014
"A productive-ass suffix", 1/29/2018
"Compound intensifier of the week", 10/20/2024
ajay said,
January 5, 2026 @ 7:47 am
The sketch in question starts at 7:41
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2kgrv5
Brett said,
January 5, 2026 @ 8:55 am
That comic was actually posted on New Year's Day, and there haven't been any updates since. I wonder if Zach is sick.
Tom Ace said,
January 5, 2026 @ 8:57 am
To illustrate how some German verbs take either dative or accusative objects, one dictionary notes that kicking _dir_ in the ass is ambivalent about where the kick lands, whereas kicking _dich_ in the ass emphasizes which body part would be particularly effective to aim at.
from Knaurs grosses Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache:
"Ich trete dir in den Hintern, wenn du das tust (ich bin so wütend, daß ich dir auf irgendeine Weise weh tue, wenn…); aber: ich werde dich in den Hintern treten (damit du hinfliegst, denn an diesem Körperteil wirkt der Tritt am besten)."
David L said,
January 5, 2026 @ 10:48 am
You might be amused the Finnish comedian Ismo's riff on the word 'ass.'
Bob Ladd said,
January 5, 2026 @ 12:51 pm
@Tom Ace: Nice example. Indirectly, it also illustrates that some German prepositions can take either the dative or the accusative, and that it isn't always obvious to a non-native observer which choice to make. Roughly speaking, in with dative indicates location and in with accusative indicates direction, but relating that distinction to English in vs. into is very misleading, because "ein Tritt in den Hintern" involves the accusative and nobody would say "a kick into the ass" in English. Similarly, you can translate English belongs in (as in "This belongs in the kitchen") with gehört in, but it also takes the accusative, and again, nobody would say "This belongs into the kitchen".
David Morris said,
January 5, 2026 @ 2:10 pm
kxcd https://xkcd.com/37/ turns 'a sweet-ass car' into 'a sweet ass-car'. While 'a kick-ass car' works, 'a kick ass-car' doesn't.
Rick Rubenstein said,
January 5, 2026 @ 7:48 pm
@Brett Zach posted today
Joshua K. said,
January 5, 2026 @ 9:14 pm
The Wiktionary guide regarding the order of definitions says:
"Most users will glance only at the first few definitions in a long entry, rather than searching through all definitions to find the best match. For this reason, it is important that the most common senses of a term be placed first, even when this may be contrary to the logical or historical sequence."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Style_guide#Definition_sequence
Tom Dawkes said,
January 6, 2026 @ 2:13 am
For a discussion of Arse and ass, see
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-international-phonetic-association/article/abs/arse-and-ass/F8378244E739A680668097C9FCE5F47A
Curious that American rhotic English has tolerated a merger of the the two.
David Marjanović said,
January 6, 2026 @ 4:07 am
"Ceratosaurus dentisulcatus is one kickass big theropod."
– actual quote from a native speaker some 25 years ago
Bob Ladd said,
January 6, 2026 @ 6:33 am
@Tom Dawkes: The loss of the distinction between ass and arse is almost certainly independent of rhoticity – it's specifically about /Vrs/ sequences in English, and it's the source of doublets like cuss/curse and bust/burst. See e.g. https://blog.oup.com/2012/09/word-origin-cuss-curse-bust-burst-etymology/ for more on this.
ajay said,
January 6, 2026 @ 7:33 am
"Ceratosaurus dentisulcatus is one kickass big theropod."
I think this is distinct from "a bigass theropod". A bigass theropod is just very big – we're not making any value judgment. A kickass big theropod is both big and excellent – and there's possibly an implication that it is excellent *because* it is big, that it is its bigness rather than any other positive attribute that allows it to kick ass. A big kickass theropod would be something different, I think. The bigness might not be in its favour. cf a kickass heavy truck vs a heavy kickass truck.
Condign Harbinger said,
January 6, 2026 @ 10:42 am
But what it really means is "Let's lick ass". Unless the recipient is of lower status of course.
The "bigass" bit is probably just the somewhat perjorative sense, much used in English – a clever arse, a mardarse, a smartarse etc.
As for the eponymous beast, I wouldn't like to get into an arse kicking contest with one of those.
David Marjanović said,
January 8, 2026 @ 7:56 am
Exactly what ajay said.
Michael Watts said,
January 8, 2026 @ 12:30 pm
That's not the most airtight reasoning. Certainly the literal meaning is older, but it also isn't lexicalized. It's just a transparent compositional phrase, and if you wanted to understand what it meant, you wouldn't look up kick ass. You'd look up kick, and separately you'd look up ass.
Of course, the younger actually-a-lexeme kick ass gets in the way of that. It seems appropriate for that entry to note that it's possible to form the same expression by combining "kick" and "ass" for an unrelated meaning. I appreciate when my English-Chinese dictionaries note that a Chinese expression might have a compositional meaning.
At the same time, if you asked me "what does 'kick ass' mean?", and I gave you the compositional meaning, I would be wrong. It's not obvious to me that it makes sense to list it first, or that the compositional meaning is a sense of the headword as opposed to a friendly "you might be interested in: " heads-up.
I can see why English and German might disagree over whether "a kick in the ass" is more about the direction or location of the kick.
But I have a hard time seeing why "this belongs in the kitchen" could be seen as directional rather than locational.
(Also, I tend to think of English into as being more about motion than "direction". If I want to talk about directions, I'm more likely to use something related to towards.)
This reminds me of when I translated "they hurled their spears at the enemy" into Latin using ad, and my teacher suggested to me that the Romans would probably have preferred in (+acc), for the implication that the spears actually penetrate the enemy as opposed to just flying in their direction.
Olaf Zimmermann said,
January 11, 2026 @ 1:01 pm
Anus mundi, anyone?