asshole
n. countablen. a very rude, selfish, or mean person who does not care about others. You use this word when you are very angry with someone's behavior, but be careful because it is quite offensive.
n. a contemptible or highly unpleasant person. Vulgar in register; used as a pejorative to describe someone perceived as arrogant, selfish, or socially abrasive.
Don't be such an asshole and help me.
He acted like a total asshole by leaving his friends to pay the entire bill without saying a word.
The protagonist is written as a self-aware asshole whose occasional flashes of genuine empathy only serve to highlight his general disregard for social conventions.
Variant of earlier arsehole, from Middle English arshole, arcehoole, equivalent to ass + hole. Cognate with Norwegian rasshøl (“asshole”), Swedish arsle (“asshole”). Compare also German Arschloch (“asshole”). Attested from the 1370s, replacing earlier Old English earsþyrel (“anus”, literally “ass hole”). First recorded in Middle English, as ers hole (Glouc. Cath. Manuscript 19. No. I., dated 1379, cited after OED), ars-hole (Bodleian Ashmole MS. 1396, dated ca. 1400, ed. Robert Von Fleischhacker as Lanfrank's "Science of Cirurgie", EETS 102, 1894, cited after OED.) Slang figurative usage dates to the 20th century; it was used of an uninviting place (compare shithole) in the 1920s, and then of an anti-social or despicable person from at least the 1950s (Harvard Advocate 137, March 1954). It is also used appositionally (as in "You're an asshole moralist", T. Chamales, 1957).
From Scots ass, asse or ash + hole.
Commonly used with the indefinite article ('an') or as a direct address in heated confrontations.