"Boehner defends Senate 'ass' jibe."

Politico front-page headline leads to: "Boehner on 'ass' comment: 'I speak English.'"

(He said the Senate needs to "get off their asses.")

ADDED: I've heard of the hand jibe.



Trying to picture the ass jibe.

AND: I do know the song is "jive," not "jibe," but I'm moved to check out the origins of the 2 words in the Oxford English Dictionary (which I can't link to).

"Jibe," originally spelled "iybe," goes back to 1573, and spelled "gibe," appears prominently in Shakespeare, in Hamlet's speech to the skull of the dead jester Yoricke: "Where be your gibes now?" It's a word "Of obscure origin: perhaps < Old French giber... as meaning to shake... ‘to handle roughly in sport’, ‘to use horseplay.’"

"Jive" is a much more recent word, going back only to 1928. It's U.S. slang, "Origin unknown." It means "Talk or conversation; spec. talk that is misleading, untrue, empty, or pretentious; hence, anything false, worthless, or unpleasant; vaguely, ‘stuff’; = jazz n. 2a."

1928   R. Fisher Walls of Jericho 301   Jive, pursuit in love or any device thereof. Usually flattery with intent to win.

It's also "Lively and uninhibited dancing to dance-music or jazz; spec. ‘jitterbugging,'" which is pretty clearly the meaning in the song.

1943   Dancing Times Dec. 117/1   The rhythm of the Jive is not an entirely new one.
1957   C. MacInnes City of Spades i. iv. 24   I'll teach you..bop steps, and jive, and all.

"Ass jive" would be a much more disparaging way to refer to Boehner's remark.