The idiom “butt naked” refers to being completely undressed, with the origin of “buck” possibly being a polite substitution for “butt.” The phrase’s origins are uncertain, with theories ranging from a skinless deer to a slang word for buttocks. Joshua Milton Blahyi, a former Liberian warlord, earned the nickname “General Butt Naked” for his fighting style during the Liberian Civil War.
Butt naked, possibly a misinterpretation or regional version of buck naked, is an idiom that refers to a complete state of undressing. The dollar part has been thought to refer to various permutations such as a young dandy, a Native American, or a male slave, but it most likely comes from a term for buttocks. No one is quite sure where it originated. Joshua Milton Blahyi, a Liberian pastor and former warlord, earned the nickname “General Butt Naked” for his fighting style during the Liberian tribal warfare.
Idioms are expressions where the words don’t mean exactly what they say, but in the case of bare ass, the meaning seems to be a little more literal. In the Southern United States, bare ass is used frequently in conjunction with bare butt, bare butt bare, and butt bare. This leaves no doubt that current usage of the phrase refers to someone who is completely naked. The use of buck in the sentence is also thought to be a polite substitution for the cruder word butt.
There are conflicting theories as to the origin of the phrase, which was first heard in the 1920s. It was found in novels dating from that period. Buck was used instead of butt, so in fact it may be the older version of the idiom. A slang word for buttocks, bucket, may also have been employed at the time and shortened to buck.
Others attribute the phrase to older origins, referring to the extremely naked condition of a skinless deer. A common Anglo-Saxon reference for a hart is a dollar. This word was later used to refer to other male animals and finally to male men. Buck as a synonym for dandy, a man overly concerned with his appearance, has been heard since the 1700s. The derogatory usage for black males and Native Americans came later.
During the Liberian Civil War between 1989 and 2003, a young man named Joshua Milton Blahyi built a reputation as a ruthless and uncharacteristically cruel guerrilla leader. Elected high priest of the Khani tribe at the age of eleven, Blahyi and his troops leapt into battle naked, wearing only boots and armed with machine guns. They earned the nickname “Butt Naked Brigade” and Blahyi became known as “General Butt Naked”. After becoming a pastor and claiming reform, Blahyi confessed to his war crimes in 2008. The bare-butt sentence is frightening to many Liberians.
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