In case you haven’t heard, governments and economists around the world are in a bit of a tizz at the moment about rising inflation, which apparently is A Bad Thing. In a move that’s reignited age-old debates about who should get the biggest slice of the pie and who should get the crumbs and be grateful for that much, many policymakers are suggesting that one way to bring inflation back down is to increase unemployment.
I’m no expert on monetary policy vs social equity, but I’ll bet few of those suggesting this approach are crying out for their own job to be among those discarded.
Inflation entered the English language in the mid-1300s. Its original meaning was a “swelling caused by gathering of ‘wind’ in the body” - or what the more dignified of my readers, who I assume is everyone, might call flatulence.
It wasn’t until around 1600 that inflation’s meaning got extended to what happens when you pump air into an inanimate object, and it was the early 1800s before anyone thought to apply it to a sustained increase in prices.
One reason for the delay is because monetary inflation was uncommon before the 1800s. According to my research (and you’re not to quote me on this) mild inflation occurred during the last years of the Roman Empire, Tudor times in England, and during the Napoleonic Wars in England. But the key word in each case is “mild”.
Short periods of runaway inflation also occurred - the American War of Independence and the French Revolution being two such occasions. But they subsided quickly and were often followed by deflation, which I imagine had the minder of the national purse begrudgingly refrain from insisting all the peasants be laid off.
It’s only us modern humans who’ve managed to pull off the quinella of high, as well as sustained, inflation. In fact, since around 1900 deflation has been almost unheard of, while hyperinflation has reared its exuberant head many times in many places, generally during periods of unrest.
Now, adult as this talk of monetary policy may be, we must sooner or later get to the real question, and that’s whether inflation is etymologically related to that earlier word flatulence.
Indeed it is. Flatus, for wind in the bowels, arose in the 1660s followed a few decades later by its bigger brother flatulence, for wind escaping the bowels. Both have their origins in the Latin flare, “to blow or puff”.
How wonderful, don’t you think, that someone thought fit to create distinct names for our wind depending on whether we’re holding it in or letting it out.
I know the other question you’re asking, and the answer is no. Fart (v) is a late 14th century word from the Old English feortan, which etymonline.com elegantly describes as being “of imitative origin”. So it’s no relation to inflation or to flatulence.
You’ll be delighted, I’m sure, to know that many European languages have their own version of English’s fart, and they generally begin with either a bilabial fricative f or a plosive p - both appropriate sounds if imitation is what’s intended.
According to some sources, the world’s oldest known joke, dating from Mesopotamia 1900 BC, is about farting. For the sake of decorum, I won’t repeat it here.
That said, delicacy around the word is hardly universal. Chaucer used it freely, and in 1722 Jonathan Swift published a tract called The Benefit of Farting. He was followed by Benjamin Franklin who wrote a treatise called, even more boldly, Fart Proudly. (How one does this, I have no idea, but I’m sure Franklin, who was nothing if not practical, offered helpful pointers.)
One person who clearly did not subscribe to Franklin’s view was the unfortunate Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who loudly let one fly in the presence of Elizabeth I. So deep was his embarrassment that he went into a seven-year self-imposed exile. Upon his return, Her Majesty reputedly said, “My Lord, I had quite forgot the fart.”
Or so the story goes. His Wikipedia biography doesn’t mention this event and nor does it include any seven-year period when he wasn’t at court. I suspect the whole thing was either made up by his enemies - of whom it seems he had many - or by someone closer to our day with a little too much time on their hands.
Maybe the guilty party was a recently laid off government economic policy advisor. Yep, that’ll be it. Troublemakers, the lot of them.
Bits and specious
A couple of weeks ago I said apostrophes are a waste of time. Reader Tony Brenton-Rule disagrees: “Apostrophes matter because they add meaning and clarity to what is written,” he writes. Author Kingsley Amis may have sided with Tony. When challenged to produce a sentence whose meaning depended on a possessive apostrophe, he came up with:
Those things over there are my husband’s. (Those things over there belong to my husband.)
Those things over there are my husbands’. (Those things over there belong to several husbands of mine.)
Those things over there are my husbands. (I’m married to those men over there.)
Amis performed some strange contortions to come up with these examples, but I suspect he was being deliberately perverse. Instead of choosing “husband” he could have just as easily chosen “dog”, say, which would have achieved the same result without getting weird.
Stacey Roper - aka Stace the Ace - is one of only a handful of artists licensed to create works based on the late Ed Roth’s Rat Fink character. (Illustration reproduced with permission.)
In my freelancing days I had the pleasure of working a few times with the hugely talented Stacey Roper. Now operating as Stace the Ace, she’s become a world-renowned pinstriper and official Rat Fink artist. Stacey’s just been featured in Rolling Stone magazine and even has a local beer named after her. For a hit of weirdo coolness, check out the Rolling Stone article and video interview here. What a treasure!
Quote of the week
Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.
Sam Ewing
Getting in touch
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