Posted September 19, If someone in your life — your colleague, boss, neighbour — consistently makes you feel demeaned, de-energised and disrespected, chances are they're an arsehole. That's according to Stanford University professor Robert Sutton, who's devoted part of his professional life to studying this particular breed of human. We've cherry-picked some of his choicest tips on how to understand arseholes — and prevent them from bringing you down. The perfect storm of conditions can turn an ordinary person into an "insensitive jerk", Sutton says. He says these conditions describe the working culture in Silicon Valley, not far from his university. There also is a "very strong body of evidence" to suggest a correlation between arseholes and power, Sutton says.
The word asshole in North American English or arsehole in all other major varieties of the English language , is a vulgarism to describe the anus , and often used pejoratively as a type of synecdoche to refer to people. The metaphorical use of the word to refer to the worst place in a region e. Its earliest known usage in newspaper as an insult was By the s, Hustler magazine featured people they did not like as "Asshole of the Month. Until the early s, the word was considered one of a number of words that could not be uttered on commercial television in the United States.
By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Cookie Policy , Privacy Policy , and our Terms of Service. It only takes a minute to sign up. From a comment here, in frequent usage, arse and ass are often interchangeable when used to refer to buttocks or to a person of dubious charms. Likewise, ass has a donkey-referring component that arse does not. In British English, the two words are not interchangeable.