flatus

Noun

flatus (countable and uncountable, plural flatuses or flatus)

1. (uncountable) Gas generated in the digestive tract.
   • This expression is utterly devoid of meaning, a mere flatus vocis.
2. (countable) The expulsion of such gas through the anus.
   • 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.1940, Walter Robson Humphries, William Ogilvie and the Projected Union of the Colleges, 1786–1787, page 70
   • 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...2007, Harold John Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age, →ISBN, page 373

   Synonyms:

   flatulence, fart

3. (obsolete) Morbid inflation or swelling.
   • […] an incensed political surgeon, who is not in much renown for his mercy, upon great provocations: who, without waiting for his death, will flay and dissect him alive; and to the view of mankind lay open all the disordered cells of his brain, the venom of his tongue, the corruption of his heart...1730 April, Jonathan Swift, "A Vindication of the Lord Carteret", in Thomas Sheridan and John Nichols (Eds.), The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, Volume IX, J....