Ass, as you know, is another word for donkey. It can also be a stupid person. My sisters, for example, are fond of telling me not to behave like an ass. In the US, however, the word can have a very different meaning. There it’s usually slang for the word arse. What I didn’t realise is that it can be used in at least 34 different ways. Professor Shahid Jameel, now at Oxford, who read a piece I recently wrote on American English, sent me an essay which explains the many and varied ways Americans use the word ass.Here’s a little joke from that essay which exemplifies seven of the major uses of ass. “Life is all about Ass. You are either covering your Ass, laughing your Ass off, kicking Ass, kissing Ass, busting Ass, trying to get a piece of Ass or behaving like an Ass. Who knows, you might even be living with an Ass.”Last week, when Gen Z lingo was the fashionable talking point of the day, I discovered that LMAO – a term they frequently use – means ‘laughing my ass off’. It’s one of the 34 different ways the essay illustrates how Americans use the word.Here are some of the others. In each instance, I’ll quote from the essay so you know I’m being authentic.Let’s start with Ass Kisser. It’s a term to describe someone who is praising another person in an exaggerated and undeserved way. In English that would be flattery.It’s very different from the phrase ‘Kiss my Ass’. That’s a disrespectful thing to say to someone you are angry at and don’t want to communicate with. It’s also very different to the phrase Kick Ass, which means to hurt someone. When your boss says he’s going to Kick Ass today, you don’t want to be around!Now a Jack Ass is a fool or an idiot but Badass is an adjective or noun to describe something that is awesome. As the essay says “Badass is actually quite positive in a dark, macho way”. For example, ‘Neymar is a Badass soccer player’ or ‘He speaks nine languages, what a Badass!’Dumbass is another term for Jack Ass. But to ‘Bust my Ass’ is to work very hard. Another way of saying it is “I worked my Ass off today’. By now the phrase Lazy Ass must be self-explanatory. But that’s not necessarily true of the phrase ‘put your Ass on the line’. It means to place yourself at risk for another person. Now when you’re in trouble or you suspect you could be, your instinct is to ‘cover your Ass’. It means to protect yourself in a problematic situation. We’ve all come across a teacher who’s best described as “a hard Ass’, which means a person who is strict and enforces rules in an inflexible way. To him, no matter how friendly or familiar you may be, you would never respond ‘My Ass’. It’s what you say when you disagree with someone or find difficult to believe what they’ve just said. In ordinary English that would be ‘that’s not true’. Many are the people we meet who are just a ‘pain in the Ass’. Do I need to explain the phrase? It means someone who’s extremely annoying. We also meet a lot of people who you could call a ‘Smart Ass’. It’s a sarcastic way of putting someone down when they’re being facetious or, as the Americans would say, behaving like Smarty Pants.Finally, there’s the word ‘Asshole’. Literally, it means anus. However, in American English it’s usually used to suggest someone is a jerk, which is slang for a stupid person. The essay explains “this is a bit disrespectful and profane but sometimes it’s merited.” Now, if you’ve concluded you ‘don’t give a Rat’s Ass’ about anything I’ve written, I’ll take the hint and stop. My intention is not to encourage you to use the word but understand its implications when it’s spoken. But you may have to go to the US to hear it!