word origin

Factual Questions
1

What is the origin of the word fart?

2

fart [oe] Fart is a widespread and ancient word in the Indo-European languages, and goes back to a pre-historic Indo-European **perd-*, which may originally have been an imitation of the sound of a fart. Its other offspring besides fart include German farzen and furzen, Swedish fjarta, Danish fjerte, Russian perdet’, Polish pierdziec, Greek pordizo, and Welsh rhechain.
Dictionary of Word Origins, John Ayto.

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3

I believe, from a long-ago Shakespeare class, that the word “petard” (a primitive type of grenade) is cognate to the word “fart.”

You can just imagine some 15th century engineer thinking, “Well, it makes a big noise, it smells, so we’ll call it a …”

and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel to toe

4

IIRC, Chaucer used the word, spelled the same way, in “The Miller’s Tale.”

5

From The Miller’s Tale:

I can’t frind any connection with petard other than the the French verb, to fart, is péter

6

And that is the connection: Petard in French was the name for a small explosive charge; it roughly meant “little fart.” The word came into English as the name of the explosive.

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7

Cecil wrote a column about the turn of the century French, uh, performing artist who specialized in farting. Mel Brooks fans will recognize the name – “Le Petomaine” (I’m unsure of the spelling).

I’ll see if I can find something in the archives. IIRC, it was in his (Cecil’s) first book.

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8

Here’s the column I was thinking of:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_394.html

A search of the archives for the word “fart” turned up a couple of dozen hits.