Friday, April 01, 2022
When Happy or Relaxed
S. Douglas Olson, Aristophanes' Clouds: A Commentary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021), p. 64 (on line 9):
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πέρδεται "he farts", as Aristophanic characters often do when happy or relaxed (e.g. Knights 115; Ecclesiazusae 464). From an old Indo-European root and cognate with the English (which as a Germanic language has shifted to an initial f).Calvert Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985), p. 50:
perd-. To fart. 1. Germanic *fertan, *fartōn in Old English *feortan (> Middle English farten), to fart: FART. 2. Greek perdix, partridge (which makes a sharp whirring sound when suddenly flushed): PARTRIDGE. See also pezd-. [Pok. perd- 819.]
Labels: noctes scatologicae
