From Michael Carden on Facebook recently, this comic strip panel from Marvel, showing an exchange between Iron Man (whose nickname is Shellhead) and Captain America:
(#1)
Carden commented:
Marvel has been around long enough that at one time “solid dick” was slang for “straight talk”.
(a story repeated with amazement and mirth on any number of blogs). I was somewhat concerned about the poor quality of the image, but much more concerned that I could find no reference to non-sexual solid dick (or anything like it) in a reputable source on slang.
Then came a small flood of debunking.
From these debunkers I choose dorkly, in a posting “3 viral geek rumors that were total bullshit” (because he does a nice follow-up to his debunking). dorkly writes, of his second example:
The Reality: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooope. The magic of poorly-done photoshop strikes again, this time to imply Iron Man is going to sexually assault Captain America, when in fact he’s only going to assault him with solid advice:
(#2)
In recompense for eliminating one piece of fabricated slang, dorkly offers us the Joker (from Batman) on some genuine (and still current) slang:
(#3)
From NOAD2 on the noun boner:
1 N. Amer. informal a stupid mistake.
2 N. Amer. vulgar slang an erection of the penis.
The newspaper laughs at his stupid mistakes, so the Joker plots to screw Gotham City. Never mock a supervillain’s penis, especially when he has a hard-on.
