He laughed his head off.
Americans say He laughed his ass off.
The astonishingly frequent American use of 'ass'
is one of several influences from French,
which uses the word 'cul' in dozens
of daily expressions - from je suis sur le cul
(bowled over, gobsmacked, flabbergasted) and
faux cul (a shifty, tricky shady person; a hypocrite)
to cul-de-four and cul-de-lampe, not to mention cul-de-sac
now often replaced by impasse.
'Ass' is a bowdlerisation of 'arse' (inadmissible in Puritan New England)
which left no word for the long-eared equine (Latin: asinus)
which came to be called 'donkey' (also donky, donkie, from 1785),
itself probably a corruption of 'Duncan' (a stupid Scot,
just as 'Paddy' meant a feckless Irishman),
and pronounced to rhyme with 'flunkey'.
Fortunately the old word (Old World) 'arse' survives
in most overseas English,
though the original word for the handsome and intelligent equine
seems to owe its scant survival
to the King James version of the Bible.
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