Flatus

/ˈfleɪtəs/ · noun

Meaning

(uncountable) Gas generated in the digestive tract..

Definitions by Sense

1. (uncountable) Gas generated in the digestive tract.
2. (countable) Expulsion of such gas through the anus.
3. (obsolete) Morbid inflation or swelling.

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

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. Johnson &c. (1801), page 226, […] 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, and spots and flatuses of his spleen: and all this for threepence.

Synonyms for flatus

Antonyms for flatus

Related Words

Word Forms

• flatuses
• flatus

Usage Notes

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