Aardvarking?
I get that question a lot.
People who read my Jett Turner Misadventure series ask, “How the hell did you come up with ‘aardvarking’ as another word for sex?”
The truth is…I didn’t.
Joe Bob Briggs did.
I loved reading Joe Bob Briggs’ Movie Reviews when I was a kid and loved that he used the word aardvarking to describe sex on screen. I was fortunate enough to interview Joe Bob Briggs in 2025 and asked him about the word.
“One of the things I like about Joe Bob is his use of language. And I'm mainly talking about the writing. You use the word fu on the end of everything, and it's used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, whatever.
But my favorite, and I hope it's okay that I use it in my personal life, is aardvarking as a euphemism for sex, I've got to ask where did you pull that one out of?
Well, a lot of these phrases were out of necessity because of words that you can't use in the newspaper. And so since you can't say certain things in a family newspaper, I would make up a nonsense word that wasn't on any kind of list. And also on television. It's on nobody's list as being a forbidden word.
One of mine that I started using to mean a slow-witted person was a slopehead. I started using slopehead. And when I was at TNT, they started telling me, you can't say slopehead. "We're going to censor that out. You can't say slopehead." I said, "Why?" They said, "Well, because that's an Asian slur." And I said, "No, no, it's not. I think you're thinking of slant eye. Slant eye is an Asian slur. Slopehead is just somebody that has an oddly shaped head.
And he said, "Well." And I said, "I think you have elevated something that I invented several years ago into an ethnic slur." I said, "This is the reverse of how language is supposed to work." It's like the thing that was invented to avoid being a slur then becomes a slur. So anyway, a word that I actually invented ended up on the can't-say-it-on-TV list.
But anyway, most of those things were invented, just so you could say that instead of something that was offensive.
Well, I still, I need you on record giving me permission to use aardvarking.
Oh, use it all you want. Yeah, absolutely.
Okay. I don't owe you a nickel every time I say it or anything.
Oh no. People came up to me with that all the time about people like people saying aardvarking instead of the other cruder synonyms for it.”
So, there you have it. Joe Bob invented it and I have his permission to use it.
And for that, I will always be grateful.
Hey…
As a bonus…
Here’s what Gemini says about me and Joe Bob.
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