Taint is a term used to refer to the perineum (the region of the human body between the testicles or vagina and the anus). This term has no basis in medical terminology and is most often considered lewd and mildly obscene.
The word taint is derived from the combination of the words "it" and "ain't" run together to form the portmanteau taint. The joke commonly being: "T'ain't your balls [or vagina] and t'ain't your ass." Despite its dubious origins, the term has become relevant to pop culture, having been used by stand up comedians and on television programs, such as Saturday Night Live (in which Horatio Sanz played a man with no taint in a sketch with Conan O'Brien). The term is predominantly an American English word, given its use of the American English slang word "ain't".
Additional recommended knowledge
Contemporary usage
One example is episode #406 of the HBO television series Mr. Show, entitled "It's Insane, This Guy's Taint!". It contained a comedy sketch about a man who makes a small fortune through the publication of an adult magazine centered on the taint. David Cross has continued to use the term in his stand-up comedy.
Part of the term's allure is that it has not become part of mainstream vocabulary. In 2003, a person claiming to be David Cross began writing to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and inserting the term "It's insane, this guys taint!" into his correspondence. Several of the letters were published and are now widely available on the internet.
Popular culture
- The term and its colloquial origins are mentioned in a 1955 Olympia Press book, Play This Love With Me (ISBN 1-59654-165-2).
- Modern television has used the term in a number of comedic shows including the March 3, 2001 episode of Saturday Night Live, in a sketch featuring Conan O'Brien as a doctor who discusses how taintless Americans, including "your friendly announcer," are valuable members of society (a parody of a public service announcement for blindness from the early 1980s). The Daily Show has made repeated use of the term including the episode broadcast on January 17 2006, when the term taint was repeatedly used in an exchange between host Jon Stewart and "Senior Political Analyst" Ed Helms, after Congressman John Shadegg (R-Arizona), seeking the position of House Majority Leader, claimed he had less of a "level of taint" (referring to corruption) than his opponents. In a June 14 2007 Correspondent Samantha Bee describes something as "like an ingrown hair on the taint", then goes on to explain the location of the taint on a man. Comedian Dane Cook also once mentioned the word taint in a stand-up act hosted by Dave Attell. In a routine about performing oral sex on his girlfriend Cook claimed that he would "uppercut her taint" so that she would never want him to perform oral sex on her again. The word taint is also used in an advertisement for the 2007 MTV Movie Awards, in which Sara Silverman, posing as an usher in a movie theatre, feels down a customer in the hopes of finding prohibited outside food.
- Animated adult series such as Drawn Together, Family Guy and American Dad have also employed "taint" for comedic value in recent years, as the use of the relatively obscure term is often allowed by network censors. Beavis and Butthead also referenced the taint years earlier, in an episode in which Beavis claims to be able to see his taint. The HBO series Deadwood featured the use of the term when one of its characters was facing a hazardous surgical procedure to remove a kidney stone. The Showtime series Weeds also featured the use of the term while characters Doug and Andy argued over what it was actually called while sitting in Nancy's living room. Andy insisted it was called a "taint", while Doug disagreed, claiming that it was called a "runway." This led them to ask the housekeeper, "Lupita, what do you call the thing between the dick and the asshole?" Her response: "The coffee table."
- On the short-lived Comedy Central show Dog Bites Man there was a character named Marty Shonson who was born with two taints and two anuses, although after corrective surgery he was left with one, large, taint.
- In the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, just before a dodgeball match, one of the members of team "Average Joes" (Dwight) announces that "we're going to get our taints handed to us". This is because Dwight is visibly shaken in anticipation of the upcoming match, in which the team feels they will lose.
- In the 2006 parody film Date Movie, after Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan) and Grant Fockyerdoder (Adam Campbell) have sex for the first time, Grant wanders into Julia's bathroom post-coitally to wash his face. He grabs what he thinks is a towel and turns out to be a huge pair of underpants (making fun of Bridget Jones's Diary). He then looks in the bathroom cupboard and finds such products like Crabs Hotel and the like, much to Grant's disgust. He then looks at the bathroom bench where he sees a product called "Taint Cleaner: For Heavy Traffic Areas". He then looks at this, surprised, and rubs the end of the can (it had a brush on its end) onto his genitalia where the audience hears Julia speak of wanting Grant to meet her parents off-screen (obviously spoofing Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers), and with no reply Grant continues to use the Taint Cleaner from his genitalia to his bottom (all while wearing black underwear).
- SaveTheTaint.org details a problem the site refers to as Tiny Taint Syndrome. It also has several articles and essays about the condition and its effects on the public. This is also the home of "Super Taint." Super Taint battles the evil forces of Big Chemical.
- The Don and Mike show explores the "wonderfull world of Taint" almost weekly on their syndicated radio show.
- The title sketch from the episode "It's Insane, This Guy's Taint" of Mr. Show, the short lived HBO sketch comedy show by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, parodies the film Boogie Nights: showing how one man rises to a pornographic pseudo-stardom due to his impressive taint. The show further parodies the name "T'aint" itself and the relative ambiguity of the word by explaining how a fictional pornographic magizine named "T'aint" is copied many times over by "T'wasn't", "T'weren't" and "Neither Balls Nor Ass" magazines as these magazines attempt to cash in on the recent success of taint pornography.
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