This, like many strips, spawned from a conversation with my wife, in this case one regarding which words are and aren’t appropriate with an “-ass” suffix (or “-assed,” if you prefer. I personally hold that “-assed” is more correcter English talkins, but I went with “-ass” for the strip anyway because it’s more common. Debate away!)
Of course, I can’t do a strip about the “-ass” suffix without acknowledging the definitive work on the subject, this glorious XKCD strip, which has been hanging on my cubicle wall for years.
MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: *Giggling* I like this one. 
(Yes, she actually said a smiley. I heard it.)
-=ShoEboX=-
Remember Sifl & Olly? “You’ve got some serious-ass problems!”
I *think* the rule is, -ass should only be appended to words of one syllable.
Any more would be too cumbersome. That’s why “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-ass” sounds so lame.
Feel free to disagree.
yeah Jan has it right, but it’s funny how rules like that become more intuitive than written.. it’s all about what ‘sounds good’
then the bit about recursion.. that’s the funniest thing since Nelson Muntz called someone “ass-butt”
I gotta disagree about the one-syllable rule, since I’m pretty sure “busted-ass truck” is an actual legal designation hereabouts…
For some reason, I thought “picturesque” was the grown-up word for half a second.
I think the rule is that the stem can only have one stressed syllable, and it must be the first syllable. So two-syllable examples “fancy-ass” and “angry-ass” are fine, but “*blessed-ass” (as in “*that blessed-ass virgin mother”) is out.
I thought of a modification to my rule, then instantly thought of an exception.
The word can have more than one syllable, but the more syllables it has, the more likely it is it will seem lame.
Exception:
If you dig a really deep hole miles down into the Earth’s crust, that could be a
Mohorovičić-ass hole.
Of course, if you’re being a jerk about it, you’re being a…
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Mohorovi%C4%8Di%C4%87
Andrija Mohorovičić (Croatian pronunciation: [̝ǎndri̞ja mɔ̝xɔ̝rɔ̝̌vi̞ʧi̞ʨ]) (January 23, 1857 – December 18, 1936) was a notable Croatian meteorologist and seismologist…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mohole
Project Mohole was an ambitious attempt to drill through the Earth’s crust into the Mohorovičić discontinuity, and to provide an Earth science complement to the high profile Space Race. The project was initially led by the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC) with funding from the National Science Foundation.
Depends how you pronounce blessed. Sometimes it has two syllables (esp in a roman catholic context like your phrase) and sometimes it has one. Your rule sounds pretty sound to me though.
Blest-ass sounds even worse.
It needs to be
1. an Oxford-English
2. adjective or a participle (Mohorovičić as a name is out, anyway).
3. not longer than three syllables
4. the first of which is stressed.
How bout that?
its very nice post great job and thanks for sharing.