What does bunghole mean?
A bunghole is the opening bored into a cask, barrel, or keg through which liquid is poured in or drawn out, normally sealed with a wooden, cork, or plastic plug known as a bung. The term is standard technical vocabulary in brewing, winemaking, distilling, and cooperage, where phrases like 'tapping the bunghole' remain part of everyday trade language. Because of a separate vulgar slang sense referring to the anus — a usage popularized widely by late twentieth-century American comedy — the word often strikes general audiences as funny or crude, and it appears frequently in humorous writing precisely because of that double life. Etymologically straightforward, it is simply a compound of 'bung' (the stopper) and 'hole'. For anyone working with barrels or reading historical accounts of brewing and shipping, knowing the term is genuinely useful; for everyone else, it is a reminder that even the most ordinary trade words can acquire unexpected cultural baggage.
A hole in a cask, barrel, or similar container through which liquid is introduced or withdrawn, typically sealed with a bung.
"Inspectors checked each cask's bunghole for signs of leakage before loading the shipment."
Neutral technical term within brewing and cooperage trades.
Vulgar slang for the anus.
Informal and potentially offensive; avoid in formal writing.
Standard regular plural; used when referring to multiple casks or multiple openings.
"Each of the fifty barrels had two bungholes, one on top and one on the side."
Before MTV made it a punchline, 'bunghole' was simply the honest trade vocabulary of every cooper and brewer in England — and it still is.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of bunghole
Bunghole is a transparent English compound of 'bung' — the stopper used to seal a cask — plus 'hole', and has been part of the language since at least the early modern period, appearing in trade and brewing contexts from around the sixteenth century onward. Its origin is purely descriptive: the hole that receives the bung. The word belongs to the same family as other cooperage terms like 'bung', 'spile', and 'tap'. Its later slang application to the anus developed through simple visual analogy and became widespread in twentieth-century American colloquial speech.
Related word forms
How bunghole is actually used
In brewing and cooperage contexts, 'bunghole' is entirely neutral technical vocabulary and remains in everyday professional use. Outside those trades, however, the word carries strong juvenile or scatological humor for many English speakers, owing to its slang sense; speakers should be aware that using it casually may be read as a joke rather than a technical reference. The word is informal-to-neutral in register depending entirely on context.
Easily confused with bunghole
A nonsense word popularized by Beavis and Butt-Head as an invented persona name, not a real dictionary word; 'bunghole' itself is the actual term for the opening in a cask.