Iron Man, Captain America, and antique slang

From Michael Carden on Facebook recently, this comic strip panel from Marvel, showing an exchange between Iron Man (whose nickname is Shellhead) and Captain America:

(#1)

Carden commented:

Marvel has been around long enough that at one time “solid dick” was slang for “straight talk”.

(a story repeated with amazement and mirth on any number of blogs). I was somewhat concerned about the poor quality of the image, but much more concerned that I could find no reference to non-sexual solid dick (or anything like it) in a reputable source on slang.

Then came a small flood of debunking.

From these debunkers I choose dorkly, in a posting “3 viral geek rumors that were total bullshit” (because he does a nice follow-up to his debunking). dorkly writes, of his second example:

The Reality: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooope. The magic of poorly-done photoshop strikes again, this time to imply Iron Man is going to sexually assault Captain America, when in fact he’s only going to assault him with solid advice:

(#2)

In recompense for eliminating one piece of fabricated slang, dorkly offers us the Joker (from Batman) on some genuine (and still current) slang:

(#3)

From NOAD2 on the noun boner:

1 N. Amer. informal    a stupid mistake.

2 N. Amer. vulgar slang    an erection of the penis.

The newspaper laughs at his stupid mistakes, so the Joker plots to screw Gotham City. Never mock a supervillain’s penis, especially when he has a hard-on.

One Response to “Iron Man, Captain America, and antique slang”

  1. Bill Cousert (@billcousert) Says:

    I wonder if anything we say today could have a totally different meaning 75 years from now.

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