flatus

Definition

Gas generated in the digestive tract.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin flātus (“blowing, wind, fart”). First attested in the 1660s–1670s.

Example Sentences

• "This expression is utterly devoid of meaning, a mere flatus vocis."
• "The point of quoque with illos is that those flatus, which have the right to be called winds, are also subject to laws like the winds themselves."
• "A long summary of the work quickly appeared in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, which began with the theory Ten Rhijne’s had adapted from his Japanese colleagues: “This Author treating of the Gout, … asserts Flatus or Wind included between the Periosteum and the bone to be the genuine producer of those intolerable Pains … and that all the method of cure ought to tend toward the dispelling those Flatus”.¹⁵⁶"

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