“Bum” has been a popular British term for the backside for centuries, and is still alive and well, while “bum fodder” has been slang for toilet paper (of some sort, anyway) since the mid-17th century. Unfortunately, “bung” or “bung hole” for the rectum, also of British origin, is a little less well-known, though still used occasionally in Britain. In America, it was most popular with seamen in the 18th century.
Usage Note: Reflecting on the skeleton of poor Yorick and on the meaning of existence (Hamlet did that a lot, to the point where you wanted to bitch-slap him) Hamlet said, “To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung hole?”
In other words, there’s no sense worrying about what will happen to you; in the end, we all wind up dumped on the universal dung heap, neither returning as prince nor frog, but merely as a dangler on the cosmic sphincter.
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