The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #62913 Message #3095984
Posted By: Joe_F
15-Feb-11 - 05:31 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: The Queen's Ass
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Queen's Ass
My guess would be, quite the contrary, that the three-letter spelling formally avoids the imputation of vulgarity while preserving the pun. That would depend, however, on how the two words were pronounced in 18th-century English English, and more particularly in the dialect of the poem's author & likely readers. The OED does not give the pronunciation of "arse" at all, claiming that it is "Obs. in polite use"; but, poking around the compounds, I gather that it is pronounced with the vowel of "father", whereas "ass" is pronounced with the vowel of "hat", so that the pun is not a good one in Received Pronunciation, even tho that is nonrhotic. There is no reason to suppose, however, that that was true 250 years ago.