Today's Word: bunghole

I’ll cop to my ignorance. I thought bunghole was only a euphemism (or dysphemism, depending on your point of view) for anus. It seemed such a close cousin to both butthole and bumhole.

It might even have been coined, I though, by Mike Judge. But it seems I was a victim of the recency illusion. Bunghole is quite bit older than Beavis and Butthead. Older than MTV. Older even than television.


A bunghole is a hole in a cask or barrel that’s used to fill or empty that barrel.

When you want to seal the barrel, you stick a bung in the bunghole.

Say it out loud: “Stick a bung in the bunghole.” Fun to say, right? “Stick a bung in the bunghole! I am Cornholio! I need TP for my bunghole!”

Think of the old visual cliché of the destitute Great Depression–era man wearing nothing but black socks and a barrel, and take a close look at the barrel.

Bunghole in the front,
bunghole in the back

Or imagine an old black-and-white wild-west cartoon: The evil, black-hatted, curly-mustachioed gunslinger rides into town at the head of his scruffy gang. The gangly schoolteacher, sensing danger, dives into the nearest barrel and peeks out through what?

Through the bunghole.

When that happens, the barrel that the gaunt grammarian cowers in is likely an old beer or whiskey barrel.

When beer is aged the old-fashioned way — in wooden casks — the bunghole is very important. It’s the only access point that the brewmaster has to the beer as at ages. It’s used to let out built-up carbonation, and it lets air into the barrel so that it can be poured out through the tap. (Otherwise, the exiting beer would create a vacuum inside the barrel.)

And, of course, it's another word for portal to the place where the sun don't shine.