Flatus

Pl. flatuses. [a. L. flātus a blowing, f. flāre to blow.]

  ǁ 1.  A blowing, a blast; a breath, a puff of wind.

  Flatus vocis (the breath of the voice), a phrase used to describe the ultra-nominalist opinion attributed to Roscellinus (12th c.), that universals have no substantial or conceptual existence, but consist in nothing more than the mere sound of their names.

1692.  Ray, Dissol. World, I. iii. (1693), 10. It might possibly be effected by the same Causes that Earthquakes are, viz. Subterraneous Fires and Flatuses.

1706.  S. Clarke, Lett. to Dodwell, 31. You make the Soul, as being a mere Flatus, to have a more precarious subsistence even than mere Matter itself.

1875.  Whitney, Life Lang., iv. 64. In the older tongues of our family, and even in some modern ones, both of our own and of other families, there are fourth and fifth products of the same articulating positions, made by letting slip a bit of breath or flatus, a brief h, after the simple mute; turning a p or b into a ph or bh (pronounced as written), and so on.

  2.  Path. An accumulation or development of wind in the stomach or bowels; wind.

1669.  W. Simpson, Hydrol. Chym., 85. From the antipathetical concourse of which two ariseth a secret incoercible flatus.

1728.  W. Rutty, in Phil. Trans., XXXV. 563. She said nevertheless, that Flatuses would sometimes be discharged from the Pudenda; and the more they were so, the less Uneasiness she perceived.

1858.  Copland, Dict. Pract. Med., I. 1043. It is of some importance to ascertain the source of the flatus which is often formed so abundantly in the digestive canal.

1872.  T. G. Thomas, Dis. Women, 133. Further experience demonstrated a necessity for the use of a short rectal tube for some ten or twelve days after the operation, that a free escape of flatus might be unobstructed.

  3.  A morbid inflation or swelling. lit. and fig.

1702.  The English Theophrastus, 9. He [the Poet] takes his Malice for a Muse, and thinks himself Inspir’d, when he is only Possess’d, and blown up with a Flatus of Envy and Vanity.

1730.  Swift, Vind. Ld. Carteret, Wks. 1761, III. 189. An incensed political surgeon … 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, and spots and flatuses of his spleen—And all this for threepence.

  4.  nonce-use. = AFFLATUS 2.

1719.  D’Urfey, Pills (1872), II. 201.