In my search for Upper Paleolithic site of Grotte du Renne, and subsequently Châtelperronian artifacts (controversial in archaeologist circles ~ is it a Neanderthal site or a mixture of Modern Humans and Neanderthal ~ zzzzzz, I know), I came across this in the Merriam-Webster dictionary online.
Somehow knew I was in serious need of silly words that bring childhood back to the forefront.
So, here are the words, brought to you by Merriam-Webster:
Fart: The humble fart crept, like a silent yet obtrusive guest, into our vocabulary long ago. It existed first as a verb, in use since the 13th century, and as a noun from the 15th. It is not currently considered polite, either in lexical form or in action; we provide a usage note which states "often vulgar," while the majestic Oxford English Dictionary says it is "not now in decent use." That being said, the word has been used by many of our finer scribes (and almost all of our four-year-olds) over the years.
Fizzle: While today fizzle has such noble meanings as "to fail or end feebly especially after a promising start," the word has origins of a baser sort. Fizzle is thought to be an alteration of the Middle English fist ("flatus"), which in addition to providing us with the verb for breaking wind quietly, was also munificent enough to serve as the basis for a now-obsolete noun meaning "a silent fart" (feist).
Farting-crackers: Farting-crackers, we regret to inform you, never really caught on. This now-obscure word for breeches appears first in the 1699 A Dictionary of the Canting Crew, and thereafter in a number of other specialized lexicons, such as the 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, and James Caulfield’s 1793 work, Blackguardiana. All of these titles, while major works in the history of lexicography, deal with slang and various other forms of non-standard language. The closest that farting-crackers has ever come to legitimacy, at least insofar as inclusion in a general dictionary qualifies as such, is when it appeared in several editions of Nathan Bailey’s dictionary in the middle of the 18th century. This is where we remind you of our descriptivist bent; if enough people use a word with a definite meaning for a prolonged period we are honor-bound to consider including that word in our dictionary.
Petarade: Definition - "An act of breaking wind; a fart or series of farts" (Oxford English Dictionary)
Petarade comes to our language from the French, and there is some speculation that, while this curious word may have visited English on occasion, it is but a tourist, and has never become naturalized enough to achieve citizenship in our language. That being said, there appears to be no other single word in our language which may be glossed as "a series of farts," and so certain allowance must be made.
Flatuousity: Flatuousity may look as though it is nothing more than a lexical parvenu, a gussied-upsynonym that is only good-old-fashioned-flatulence with a fancified suffix, but it is so much more. Well, actually, it is just a synonym for flatulence, but it is the older of the twain. We have been afflicted with flatuosity since the 16th century, and flatulence did not appear on the scene until the 18th
Ventosity: It would be a bit of a stretch to call ventosity a useful word, as it is fairly obsolete. However, it has a nice ring to it, a classical pedigree (coming from the Latin ventosus, "windy, flatulent"), and as an added benefit, contains the secondary meaning of "pompous inflated conceit or boasting."
Pumpernickel: At first glance there is no apparent connection between the dark bread, beloved by some, and the subject of this article. However, looking more closely at the word's etymology ensures that you will have an inappropriate morsel of trivia at many a luncheon to come. Pumpernickel comes from the German words pumpern ("to break wind") and Nickel("goblin"), apparently due to its indigestibility.
Break Wind: Lest you think our forbears an uncouth lot, possessing not even sufficient decorum to be embarrassed by the word fart, allow us to point out that we have been euphemizing our flatulent language since at least the beginning of the 16th century. For that is when we have lexical evidence of break wind.
And so, I end this enlightening post with:
Love, 365
