Tintin Forums

Well, I was in school when this Blistering Baboon came to me and said something unpleasent about Tintin You know the 'f' word and the 's' word? That's what he said about Tintin.

I was pretty angry and would have wished to beat him up. Well, I'm not sure if Tintin was being insulted once but I remembered that Tintin said a vulgarity or two in 'The Shooting Star'. It was this quote:'What an ass am I' and 'What an idiot I am'. Yes he did said that and he was insulting himself.

Ass isn't vulgar or a swearword (except strangely enough in the US). Everywhere else it's a horses species similar to a donkey, and another term for 'stupid'.

Actually, an ass is the offspring of a horse with a donkey. Because horses and donkeys are such similar species the are able to bread but the offspring they produce is sterile. But that's just me being pedantic ;)

I'm sure Tintin said, "I'm an ass," or words to that effect loads more times than just once in The Shooting Star.

Actually, ClaroQuerido, Tintinrulz is right - ass is simply another (older) word for donkey.

Maybe where you come from horse-donkey crossbreeds are called asses, but in most parts of the world (and in standard English) such a hybrid would be called either a mule or a hinny, depending on which of its parents was of which species. (A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse; a hinny the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey.)

Sorry to be pedantic, but you started it! ;-)

All told, it is quite funny to stumble upon Tintin saying "What an ass I am!" when you're a 23 year old American.

I hate to disrupt some of your illusions here, but Tintin never uses the word "Ass" (swearword usage) in any of the books.

In "The Shooting Star" page 60, top row, he says "What an idiot I am!" because he forgot to get a piece of meteorite, thus making their whole adventure pointless. I guess you could call it insulting himself, but I prefer to look at it as just an acknowledgment that he wasn't using his head; not necessarily insulting.

But anyway, nowhere in the entire canon does he ever use the term "ass".

Umm.. I'm sure of it that he used a word 'ass' in The Shooting Star

Well, if you can show me where he uses it I'll believe you ... But for now I still stand in my firm conviction that he never says it ... I've read The Shooting Star about 4 times and I don't ever remember seeing it once ... I might even read it another time now and look for the word ... Though I'm positive I won't see it ...

Combined two consecutive posts

Oh, dear me! ... It appears I made a huge blunder!

I was scanning through The Shooting Star, and low and behold on page 50, third row, third frame, Tintin sure enough says, "What an ass I am."

I'm so embarrassed. I was sure he never said it; I would have staked a million dollars on it. Oh, well, I was wrong. Sorry for being so adamant about it in my previous posts, but I really was sure of myself. It just goes to show that no matter how many times you read through a book you can still miss something or other.

Anyway, my apologies for being such an idiot ...

...And if it wasn't for that pesky dinner bell on "The Peary" you'd have got away with it!

Don't worry, borschtisov. I've done it as well. Sharks and Calculus Affair seem to be one and the same to me at times :-)

What an ass I am!

Of course I was confusing ass with mule... Duh.. I better stop drinking...