Yesterday’s Dilbert, one in a series on robot technology in the workplace:
… up their asses (though the pointy-haired boss doesn’t get to finish the phrase because the C.E.O. understands where he’s going and continues his own thought).
In any case, the C.E.O.’s idea is to have robots up the wazoo, both literally (up the employees’ anuses) and figuratively (to have lots and lots of them).
On the noun wazoo, from NOAD2:
US informal the anus. PHRASES up (or out) the wazoo very much; in great quantity; to a great degree: he’s insured out the wazoo | Jack and I have got work up the wazoo already.
This is essentially the content of the OED3 (March 2006) entry, though there’s a bit more in the OED, which notes that wazoo is used
Freq. as a (euphemistic) substitute for ass in fig. phrases, as pain in the wazoo, etc.
and gives as its earliest cite in the sense ‘the buttocks, the anus’:
1961 Calif. Pelican (Univ. Calif., Berkeley) May (back cover) Run it up yer ol’ wazoo!
and as its earliest cite in up (also out) the wazoo:
1981 Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Jrnl. 5 Jan. d8/3 There comes a time in performing when you just do it. You can have theory up the wazoo.
I would have thought that wazoo in up the wazoo was just another euphemistic substitute for ass — in up the ass ‘in great quantity’, which certainly occurs now. And probably it is; the difficulty is that the OED‘s entry for ass is mostly antique and lacks this use. NOAD2, which also lacks up (or out) the ass, merely mirrors the OED in this respect.
August 28, 2015 at 11:02 am |
I’m not sure it was before OED’s 1961, but it was a long time ago I learned (to the tune of the opening bars of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio):
How is your old wazoo,
Is it red, is it white, is it blue?