OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL The many definitions of Cornhole: sex act, cartoon, and...Bizarre Midwestern game?!?

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) - Late last night I went for a stroll through "Uptown" Oxford, the closest to a downtown area Oxford has. It was hot and humid; too hot to really do anything, too miserable to do anything but wander the streets aimlessly in search of something interesting.

This group of high school girls were sitting in Martin Luther King Park, giggling and pointing, chatting about boys, and doing what, well, high school girls do. As I walked by, one of the girls, a cashier whom I've met only when buying soy milk at the grocery store, waves and calls me over to chat.

The girl I knew asked me what I was doing in Uptown. Nothing, I said. I asked her what she and her friends were doing.

"We just got done playing cornhole," the girl said. "We're just chillin' and hanging out."

Wait a minute.

Playing cornhole? Where I come from, that English phrase has a whole different meaning. As a matter of fact, in most parts of America, a group of high schoolers "playing cornhole" would be cause from concern.

These girls, however, were referring to a local game that involves tossing a small bean bag through a hole cut into a plywood platform. Outside the Midwest, this is usually referred to as a "beanbag toss."

In most parts of America, "cornhole" is a slang term for the anus, a synonym for "asshole." Cornholing or playing cornhole often refers to an anal sex. I've heard rednecks in the South use it as a derogatory term for gay men. I've heard the phrase used in San Francisco's Castro District, in bars in the French Quarter.

For example, if I walked into a bar in Mississippi, and stated that I'd spent all day playing cornhole, I'd either become a heterosexual victim of gay-bashing or face a mixture of laughter, sighs, and looks of shock. The 90s cartoon Beavis and Butthead featured a character who, when doped up on a sugar rush, became the Great Cornholio, eternally seeking "TP for his bunghole." (see photo above)

Gen-Xers and some older Gen-Yers probably would make a connection to this character before they would associate it with tossing a beanbag through a hole in a box.

These girls asked me why I was laughing every time they mentioned how "playing cornhole" was the most exciting thing to do in Oxford if you were under 21.

I politely said that it had nothing to do with them.

Hehehehe...In Colorado, they say the same thing about Wyoming and Nebraska, but it's usually followed by some reference to velcro gloves and sex with a farm animal.

Good old American slang. It's what separates North American English from that "stank-ass British English, with its hella stupid pronunciations, that makes every word sound so whack, for fuck's sake."

JWJ