English, motherfucker, do you speak it?

Everyday I get questions that I wish I knew the answer to (like how do trains go uphill?). As the bullshit artists that we all are (okay, maybe not all of us, but at least achtentachtig percenten of us) we like to, what I will diplomatically call, "intuitionalize" a reason or cause of something even if we have no.fucking.clue why something is the way it is. Three cheers for liberal arts degrees.

So, all you educated souls, what exactly is a douchebag?

I think we all know what the slang term means (please visit whitehouse.gov for further clarification -- can't hyperlink that one or the random man monitoring phone calls and emails will hunt me down for the threat to national security that I am. But perhaps I'm worrying about the wrong government... Fun Dutch fact: The Netherlands is the most wire-tapped country in the world), but that's not where I'm going.

A Dutch guy asked me this somewhat recently, "What is this douchebag?" seeking the actual definition of the term, not the slang (how this got to be slang, by the way, is beyond me and sadly, Wikipedia doesn't have all the answers...yet...any cunning linguists out there who research this further, please update the "douche" entry when you get a chance). I felt a bit like a mom explaining the birds and the bees while this blue-eyed student stared at me expectantly. Using my extensive knowledge of French, I explained that douche in French means to wash and women used to use a, uh, turkey baster of types to uh, clean themselves. So uh, therefore douching is uh, a woman cleaning herself. Pass the tequila.

Of course in that explanation, there is no bag mentioned -- turns out the turkey baster is attached to a baggie of water/vinegar/bleach/poisonous cleaning supplies/etc. Coming from left field here, but has anyone out there every actually seen a douche bag? (seeing Karl Rove on the street doesn't count.) How many generations ago were these things a birth control of choice? I know they went out of vogue because they used antiseptics which can cause "an imbalance of the natural bacteria in the vagina, also resulting in an increased likelihood of infection" but that doesn't tell me what percentage of the population was down with this system.

I'm super tempted to take this strain of conversation into a general birth control discussion, but I'm sure I've grossed out enough people for today (including myself), so the sponge vs. rhythm method battle will have to wait. My work here is done.