
Flatulence humor (more commonly known as fart jokes) is a form of
toilet humor
Toilet humour or potty humour is a type of off-colour humour dealing with: defecation (including diarrhea and constipation), in which case it is called scatological humour (compare scatology); urination; flatulence, in which case it is called fla ...
that refers to
flatulence
Flatulence is the expulsion of gas from the Gastrointestinal tract, intestines via the anus, commonly referred to as farting. "Flatus" is the medical word for gas generated in the stomach or bowels. A proportion of intestinal gas may be swal ...
. It can take the form of to any type of
joke,
practical joke device, or other
off-color humor .
History
Although it is likely that flatulence humor has long been considered funny in cultures that consider the public passing of gas impolite, such jokes are rarely recorded. It has been suggested that one of the oldest recorded jokes was a flatulence joke from the
Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...
ians that has been dated to 1,900 BC.
Two important early texts are the 5th century BC plays ''
The Knights'' and ''
The Clouds'', both by
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving play ...
, which contain numerous fart jokes. Another example from
classical times appeared in ''
Apocolocyntosis'' or ''The Pumpkinification of
Claudius
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; ; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54), or Claudius, was a Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Nero Claudius Drusus, Drusus and Ant ...
'', a
satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
attributed to
Seneca on the late Roman emperor:
He later explains he got to the afterlife with a quote from
Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...
: "Breezes wafted me from Ilion unto the Ciconian land."
Archeologist
Warwick Ball asserts that the Roman Emperor
Elagabalus played
practical jokes on his guests, employing a
whoopee cushion-like device at dinner parties.
In the translated version of Penguin's ''
1001 Arabian Nights Tales'', the story "The Historic Fart" tells of a man who flees his country from the sheer embarrassment of farting at his wedding, only to return ten years later to discover that his fart had become so famous, that people used the anniversary of its occurrence to date other events. Upon learning this, he exclaimed, "Verily, my fart has become a date! It shall be remembered forever!" His embarrassment is so great, he returns to exile in India.
In a similar vein,
John Aubrey
John Aubrey (12 March 1626 – 7 June 1697) was an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. He was a pioneer archaeologist, who recorded (often for the first time) numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England ...
's ''
Brief Lives'' recounts of
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford that:
One of the most celebrated incidents of flatulence humor in early
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian d ...
is in ''
The Miller's Tale'' of ''
The Canterbury Tales'' by
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
, which dates from the 14th century; his ''
The Summoner's Tale'' has another. In the first, the character Nicholas sticks his buttocks out of a window at night and humiliates his rival Absolom by farting in his face. But Absolom gets revenge by thrusting a red-hot plough blade between Nicholas's cheeks ("")
The medieval Latin joke book ''
Facetiae'' by
Poggio Bracciolini includes six tales about farting.
François Rabelais' tales of ''
Gargantua and Pantagruel'' are laden with acts of flatulence. In Chapter XXVII of the second book, the giant, Pantagruel, releases a fart that "made the earth shake for twenty-nine miles around, and the foul air he blew out created more than fifty-three thousand tiny men, dwarves and creatures of weird shapes, and then he emitted a fat wet fart that turned into just as many tiny stooping women."
The plays of
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
include several humorous references to flatulence, including the following from ''
Othello'':
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
, in his open letter "
To the Royal Academy of Farting", satirically proposes that converting farts into a more agreeable form through science should be a milestone goal of the Royal Academy.
In
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...
's 1876 pamphlet ''
1601
This Epoch (reference date)#Computing, epoch is the beginning of the 400-year Gregorian leap-year cycle within which digital files first existed; the last year of any such cycle is the only leap year whose year number is divisible by 100.
Jan ...
'' a cupbearer at Court who's a Diarist reports:
The Queen inquires as to the source, and receives various replies. Lady Alice says:
In the first chapter of ''
Moby-Dick
''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 Epic (genre), epic novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Captain Ahab, Ahab, captain of the whaler ...
'' by
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...
, the narrator states:
Gallery of medieval flatulent-artwork
These images came from medieval manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries.
Maastricht Book of Hours, BL Stowe MS17 f061v.png
Maastricht Book of Hours, BL Stowe MS17 f153v (detail).png
Butt-trumpet, Book of Hours, Flanders, 14th century (Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, W.88, f. 157r).jpg
Butt-trumpet, Rotshild Canticles, MS 404, folio 134r.jpg
Butt-trumpet, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Saint-Omer c. 1294-1297 Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 131, fol. 202r.jpg
Butt-trumpets, The Maastricht Hours, Stowe 17, fol. 201r.jpg
Butt-trumpets, The Rutland Psalter, folio 87v.jpg
Inculpatory pronouncements
The sourcing of a fart involves a ritual of assignment that sometimes takes the form of a rhyming game. These are frequently used to discourage others from mentioning the fart or to turn the embarrassment of farting into a pleasurable subject matter. The trick is to pin the blame on someone else, often by means of deception, or using a back and forth rhyming game that includes phrases such as the following:
The following begin with “He who...”, “She who...”, “They who...”, “Whoever...” or “The one who ...”:
*...declared it blared it.
*...observed it served it.
*...detected it ejected it.
*...rejected it respected it.
*...
*...sang the song did the pong.
*...denied it supplied it.
*...said it spread it.
*...
*...accuses blew the fuses.
*...pointed the finger pulled the trigger.
*...articulated it particulated it.
*...introduced it produced it.
*...inculpated promulgated.
*...deduced it produced it.
*...was a smart-ass has a fart-ass.
*...sniffed it biffed it.
*...eulogized it aerosolized it.
*...sensed it dispensed it.
*...rapped it cracked it.
*...policed it released it.
*...remarked on it embarked on it.
*...circulated it perpetrated it.
*...last spoke let off the ass smoke.
*...said the words did the turds.
*...rebuts it cuts it.
*...said the rap did the crap.
*...had the smirk did the work.
*...spoke it broke it.
*...asked it gassed it.
*...started it farted it.
*...explained it ordained it.
*...thunk it stunk it.
*...is squealing is concealing.
*...thought it brought it.
*...gave the call gassed us all.
*...spoke last set off the blast.
*...made a frown laid the brown.
*...made the quip let it rip.
*...'s poking fun is the smoking gun.
*The smeller's the feller.
*It twas the thinker who loosened his sphincter.
*If you heard the song you've soiled your thong.
*Self report.
Assigning blame to another can backfire: a joke about royalty has the Queen emitting flatulence, and then turning to a nearby page, exclaiming, "Arthur, stop that!" The page replies, "Yes, Your Majesty. Which way did it go?"
Practical jokes
Practical jokes include:
*
Armpit fart
*
Whoopee cushion
*
Dutch oven
Dutch oven
A is a
slang
A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing and speech. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of pa ...
term for lying in bed with another person and pulling the covers over the person's head while
flatulating, thereby creating an unpleasant situation in an enclosed space. This is done as a prank or by accident to one's sleeping partner. The book ''
The Alphabet of Manliness'' by
Maddox discusses the Dutch oven, as well as a phenomenon it refers to as the "
Dutch oven surprise", that "happens if you force it too hard". The ''Illustrated Dictionary of Sex'' by Keath Roberts refers to this as a Dutch treat.
A connection between relationships and performing a Dutch oven has been discussed in two undergraduate student newspaper articles and in actress
Diane Farr's relationships/humor book ''The Girl Code''.
[ Diane Farr. '' The Girl Code: the secret language of single women (on dating, sex, shopping, and honor among girlfriends)'' Little, Brown and Company, 2001 , , 192 pages page 172]
In art and entertainment
Some entertainers, called
flatulist, used flatulence in a creative, musical, or amusing manner.
The following art movements or concepts include flatulence:
*
Grotesque body
*
Gross out
In addition to the historical works described
above, the following works of art or entertainment use or refer to flatulence humor:
*, Japanese art scroll from the Edo period
*
Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit
*
Bum trilogy
*
Fartman
*, Dog-Fart Roller Coaster in Denmark
References
5th-century BC establishments in Greece
Practical joke devices
Flatulence in popular culture
{{Portal, Comedy