Green’s Dictionary of Slang

conventional.

2012

Independent 24 Jan. 37/2: When I look at our pad, I often think of The Avengers – the groovy, moderne style of Emma Peel and the clubby, farty eccentricity of John Steed.

see separate entries.

see fart-face n.

(US) the anus or rectum.

1968

in DARE.

see fart-face n.

a footman.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1977		S. Stallone Paradise Alley (1978) 26: I ain’t walkin’ behind nobody – I ain’t nobody’s fart catcher!
2007		W. Ellis Crooked Little Vein 103: They fucking hate me like I was Hitler’s fartcatcher.

the vagina.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

see separate entries.

(Aus.) baked beans.

2016

N. Cummins Adventures of the Honey Badger [ebook] He’s the sort of bloke who would eat as much fart fodder as possible and then go to church.

see fart-face n.

(US) a contemptible person.

1962		(con. 1940s) H. Simmons Man Walking On Eggshells 118: Why you little farthead, just wait till I get you to the station.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 115: Farthead A person who always fools around.
1972		B. Hannah Geronimo Rex 194: What does that old farthook Silas do, by the way?
1973		in C. Browne Body Shop 155: Keep it down, man, old farthead’ll hear.

the anus.

1690		‘Teague’ Teagueland Jests I 116: I will put de Fly against dy Fart-hole.
2008		N. Drayson Birds East Africa 30: ‘[T]hese Danish fellows are talking out of their...out of their jolly fart-holes’ .

1. an obscure person.

1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 255: Seabags, you old fart knocker – we thought you was dead.
2002		posting at Logic Users Group 7 Jan. 🌐 Who’s that fartknocker next to Steve Jobs?

2. someone who does not know what they are talking about.

1996		Eble Campus Sl. Mar. 3: fartknocker – joking name for a person or animal that made a mistake.
1997		Da Bomb Summer Supplement 6: Fartknocker (n.) A jerk.
2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 fart knocker n. A stupid person, jerk. f. One of Beavis and Butthead’s many wonderful insults.
2006		posting at www.youthink.com 29 Mar. 🌐 See, the government knew that people were starting to get wise to the 9/11 conspiracy, so they took this dumb fartknocker and had him speak up about it.

see separate entries.

1. (also farter) a bed.

1947		(con. 1944) J.H. Burns Gallery (1948) 294: Hey, Joe, the guy from the next bed was prodding him, get out of that fartsack.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 42: Preem is passed out on his fartsack full a vanilla extrack all a time.
1960		(con. 1940s) D. MacCuish Do Not Go Gentle (1962) 117: The lousiest drag-ass bunch of mother-eatin’ piss-drinkin’ fart sack-lovin’ pack of homos I ever seed. [Ibid.] 145: That’s all ya think about. That and your fart-sacks and nooky.
1985		B. Humphries Traveller’s Tool 24: The flabby old Minister of War snoring away in her half of the fart sack.
1993		B. Moore Lex. of Cadet Lang. 137: The origin of the term fart sack / farter is nowhere explained in the dictionaries: cadets, however, consistently asserted that it is so called ‘because it’s the place where you fart’.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 389: Four walls/two fart sacks/ two nightstands/two lockers/one shitter/one sink.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.
2012		D. O’Donnell Locked Ward (2013) 247: The bed was empty. ‘He’s not in his farter,’ I said.
2016		N. Cummins Adventures of the Honey Badger [ebook] [I] headed to my room to catch some Zs in the fart sack.

2. a sleeping-bag.

1989

Hackworth & Sherman About Face (1991) 63: You’d be asleep almost before you’d zipped up your feather-down fart sack.

3. (US) a sheet, bedding.

1973

D. Ponicsan Cinderella Liberty 162: He was a bed-wetter. He kept stuffin’ his skivvies and fartsacks inta his locker. One of the other boots reported the smell. [...] I gave him his piece and covered him with his pissy fartsack.

4. a term of abuse.

1943		Kerouac letter 7 Apr. in Charters I (1995) 59: I still think that stooge is a piss-complected, broad-assed fartsack.
1968		G. Slatter Pagan Game (1969) 71: There was [...] Mit Jasper, Fartsack Robinson.

a term of abuse.

1700

in Wit’s Cabinet 120: Make a fool of a Fart’s end, won’t I?

a toady, a parasite.

1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1975		J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 24: ‘How about fartsuckers?’ ‘Not rotten enough.’ ‘Slimeballs?’ ‘That’s getting old.’.

phr. of contemptuous dismissal.

1662

Jack Adams his perpetual almanack 12: I love Hudibras bettere than the Turk, a fart for the Turk.

(US campus) to break wind; thus crack-farter n.

1682		‘The Whigs’ Litany for St. Omer’s’ in Ebsworth Roxburghe Ballads (1885) V:1 195: From every cursing, swearing Carter, / And from Roger, the Crack-farter.
1989		P. Munro Sl. U.

to care, thus neg. not give a fart.

[1672		M. Atkins Cataplus 17: Mother, quoth he, I speak from heart, / I value not these things a fart].
1981		S. Berkoff Decadence in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 15: You think Keith gave a fart / no fear.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 21: [N]o-one even gives a fart or second thought about the fact that Young Richo is outfitted in an oversized greatcoat.

to treat with contempt.

1970

in P.R. Runkel Law Unto Themselves 27: They all piled out of the car and started givin’ me the farts out of their ass.

(N.Z.) to go very slowly.

2003

McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

I have diarrhoea.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: I dare not Trust my A—e with a Fart, said by a person troubled with a Looseness.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

(Can./US) to give up quickly, to be defeated quickly.

1935		J. Conroy World to Win 208: They won’t git t’ first base with their strike. They’ll last about as long as a fart in a whirlwind.
1965		(con. 1930s) R. Wright Lawd Today 62: Nigger, you’d last as long trying to overthrow the government as a fart in a windstorm!

twitchy, nervous, agitated.

1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 25: Fart in a bottle: Someone is behaving like a...
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 69/2: like a fart in a fit in hopeless if not desperate trouble; eg He ran from room to room, like a fart in a fit.
2001		T. Van Mersey Talk 🌐 Similes. in and out, like a fart in a collander, or up and down, like a fart in a bottle.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 127: like a fart in a bottle/fit Agitated state. ANZ.

persistently.

1986

R. Fitzgerald Pushed from the Wings (1989) 121: We’ve been hanging around like a fart in a phonebox.

(N.Z.) in a great hurry.

2003

McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

(US) of a family, always making a stink n. (1)

1977

Maledicta 1 (Summer) 14: If he mentions his family, they’re like an Irishman’s fart: always making a lot of noise and raising stink, and never want to go back where they came from.

(Can./US) no chance at all.

1950		J.T. Farrell ‘Milly and the Porker’ in Amer. Dream Girl (1950) 197: Say, if he ever got into a fight with anybody at all, he wouldn’t have the chances of a fart in a windstorm.
1962		J. Quirk No Red Ribbons (1968) 89: He hasn’t got the chance of a fart in a windstorm.
1988		(con. WWII) S. Hynes Flights of Passage 197: ‘We haven’t got a chance,’ he said. ‘No more than a fart in a windstorm.’.
2001		A. Sillitoe Birthday 169: The kind of people which those who ran the television business hadn’t a fart’s chance in a whirlwind of meeting.
2015		T. Pluck ‘Letters to Santa’ in Life During Wartime (2018) 86: [S]coring points that, in the end, mattered less than a fiddler’s fart in a hurricane.

(Aus.) to mean nothing.

1996

J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 259: ‘Three more lousy pounds isn’t gonna mean a fart’.

see scared shitless under scare v.