fart

   This word is avoided in polite circles, though its meaning as a noun or verb referring to the breaking of wind is well-known. Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been applied in slang to contemptible people, especially older men. ‘You fart’ is unfriendly when it occurs in A Cack-Handed War, by Edmund Blishen, used by one man to another. In Garson Kanin’s Moviola an American speaker uses ‘you old fart’ to a man in his nineties. ‘You twisted little fart’ occurs in St Urbain’s Horseman, by Mordecai Richler, during an unfriendly conversation between two men. This particular collocation shows clearly that ‘fart’ is no longer being thought of as a bad smell but as a person who is mentally twisted.