Farting; breaking wind; cutting loose; blowing off; dropping one’s guts; letting ‘Fluffy’ off the chain. These are colourful metaphors for a rather mundane fact of human existence. Doubtless we can all cite many more.

Ironically, the Oxford dictionary’s offering of: ‘a small explosion between the legs’ is the least satisfying of all treatments (notwithstanding Mr. H.Cecil Wyld’s complete omission of the term in his deceptively titled: ‘Universal English Dictionary’).

The seemingly boundless interest in and humour associated with flatulence is at odds with its complexity as a biological process, its significance to the human condition and its novelty as a personal experience.

Why then does it enjoy so many synonyms?

I have long argued that proliferation of expressions for a given concept is a reliable indicator of its relevance to a society. This is best evidenced by the Inuit people’s 2,437 terms for ‘snow’ in its many guises. Though Western civilisation has markedly fewer words to describe a ‘fart’ (I use this expression solely for reason of economy), they certainly far outweigh our lexicon of snow descriptors.

So what does this tell us? That snow, per se, is more important than farting? Such an interpretation would be logical, since frozen water plays far the greater role in global weather formation (Chaos Theory aside) and sea levels. But we must be wary of red herrings. The true answer is that in relative terms, snow is more important to Eskimos and farting is more important to us.

As with every branch of science, however, answers in anthropology serve only to breed more questions. Our neat treatment of the foregoing paradigm beggars the question: ‘why are we fascinated with farting?’

This conundrum is infinitely more vexed and it would take a courageous practitioner indeed to canvass theoretically the present melange of myths, misconceptions and muddled research. Fortune favours the brave, however, and I am happy to report that I am possessed of such courage.

* Not really.

To be continued...