A serious consideration of some unserious words
Fart
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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.
He that lives upon Hope, dies farting.
— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1736
A pox a de Horses nose, he is a lowsy rascally fellow, when I came to gird his belly, his scuruy guts rumbled, di Horse farted in my face, and dow knowest, an Irishman cannot abide a fart.
— Thomas Dekker, The Second Part of the Honest Whore, 1630
The spitting, the coughing, the laughter, the neesing, the farting, dauncing, noise of the musique, and her masculine, and lowd commanding, and vrging the whole family, makes him thinke he has married a furie.
— Ben Johnson, The Works of Benjamin Johnson, 1616
Fizzle
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Definition - to break wind quietly
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).
Had the Rump but once fizled 'twas the strongest side,
But a Fart has so routed his Troop in their pride,
Though infallible Butler was his guide,
That they are both blown down the wind.
— Anon., A Display of the Headpiece and Codpiece Valour of the Most Renowned Colonel Robert Jermy, 1660
Farting-crackers
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Definition - breeches ("short pants covering the hips and thighs and fitting snugly at the lower edges at or just below the knee")
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
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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.
The word appears in a number of 17th century dictionaries, both English and English/French, and not one, but two lexicographers of that time (Edward Phillips and Randle Cotgrave) defined it as "a gun-shot of farting." The overwhelming majority of cases where it is found in English prose are translations of Rabelais.
Furthermore, there shall not one hereafter, Native of the Country of Salmigondy, but he shall level the Shot towards my Nose; all the back-cracking Fellows of the World, in discharging of their Postern Petarades, use commonly to say, Voila pour les quitters; that is, For the quit.
— François Rabelais, The lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel (trans. by Thomas Urquhart), 1694