👉 Okay class, settle down now! Let’s tackle something delightfully ridiculous and historically… precarious: the somewhat alarming, frankly rather pointy-sounding, expression "arse-balloon." (Hear that, I said “arse-balloon.” Let's embrace the frankness of my profession.)
Now, before you immediately think I'm prescribing a very specific shade of beige for your entire vocabulary, let me assure you this isn’t some newfangled teeny-rant. "Arse-balloon," historically (and I stress, historically! We wouldn't want to resurrect the practice now, frankly.) referred almost exclusively to a hot air balloon. Exactly what it sounds like—a large bladder of hot air tethered to a basket that looks suspiciously like you stuck a wicker cradle under an inflatable beach ball. Here’s the breakdown, for posterity and your continued amusement: The original word was actually supposed to be a bastardisation of the early attempts at creating these things by early hot air balloon pioneers in late 1700's. It was essentially the sound a man would make when he realised his latest creation had just gone up in flames (and then promptly floated away, which is basically the peak of early aeronautical engineering.) The name stuck and it’s now been somewhat sanitised as "hot air balloon,." The shift to “arse-balloon” wasn't about actual… well, let's just say a very
