AIBU to think ‘Fart’ isn’t a swear word.

[Toddlerteaplease]

Aged 44, my mum had told me off for complaining that their cat farted, when sitting on my knee. Apparently fart is a swear word. 🤣🤔

Did not get me started. It’s a fart. When speaking to older people involving this (as I often had cause to do for work), you would say ‘wind’ and around 50% would run with ‘passing wind’ and 50% would say ‘you mean farts?’ and run with that. For younger people they pretty much 100% use ‘fart’, which I’m also very happy to go with.

So, when we had kids we taught them it was a fart. Fine, until kids went to preschool (school prep). Then they were told all sorts of rubbish involving bottom burps and trumpets. I had to speak with every preschool we went to to tell them to pull their heads in, there was no such thing as a trumpet etc, it was either wind or a fart, and given the kids are not 80yo, and given I use it as a standard ‘accepted’ medical term, then fart it is. God, that was a painful time.

ETA - there is also wee and poo. The vast majority of patients who are not considerably over the hill say wee/poo. When talking to elderly patients I’d use urine/bowel motions and it would be a mix whether they ran with that or used wee/poo instead, and I’d be guided by that, but young patients especially would look at you perplexed if you used terms like stool/bowl motion, no idea what you are referring to so you use the common use terms.

@HoppingPavlova I had some serious bowel surgery and all the doctors and the surgeon were asking me if I had farted. So yep, I’d go with medical term too.

Well apart from the nurse who kept asking me if I had “sharted” yet, because she just knew it wasn’t going to be just a fart. She knew her stuff !! 😫

Well my mum farts like a trooper and my dad was worse. 🤣

Yes to all the other words but a fart is a fart.

I was brought up in the 50s and not only was the word never used but the bodily function itself was never referred to - I think most people we knew must have kept their wind in and released it round the corner. In fact most bodily functions were never mentioned. I can't think of when I've heard a grown-up 'let rip' tbh - perhaps there are still windy corners around? As to children and animals - it would have been bad manners to have drawn attention to any farting! So, to me, a crude word but definitely not a swear word.

Similar here. I wouldn’t use the word in front of my DF or PIL. My late DM taught us to say trump, which in the current political circumstances is very apt, I think.

Not a swear word but some people consider it vulgar or impolite.
Your mum seems to be one of them...

I dislike it, but then I was brought up by a DM who taught us that saying “shut up” is swearing!

Tinkly laugh Jolyon and I were discussing this the other day, because nanny said to Torquill and Cecil that farting was rude. I had to tell her in this house we say "one has just baked an air biscuit"

But then I could suggest even the mere mention of someone “passing wind” is rude in itself. If you need to be so polite that you need a particular phrase for it, surely mentioning it at all is just as rude?

I don’t consider fart to be a rude word. My child has always used it. But I’m also not bothered if he says “oh my god”, which very much bothers other people.

@HoppingPavlovai work on a paediatric surgical ward. One of the admission questions is when did they last have bowels open. Without fail the kids, (and most of the parents) look at you gone out.

What's a farting family?

I wasn’t aware “shit” was a swear word till my children started school and definitely don’t think “fart” is. I don’t think most people discuss bodily functions in polite company, but it’s the topic that’s inappropriate not the vocabulary in this case.

You fart loudly and ask them what that noise was?

What's with the exclamation marks? Those are not exciting sentences.

It’s a good Old English word - good enough for Chaucer! Personally I dislike all the prissy, prudish euphemisms. They make me think of what my DF used to call ‘the net curtain mentality’.

I find it a brash and impolite word. I still pull my adult DC up on it (and always will). They just laugh!

I'm afraid I do (very mildly ) judge other people who say it. I wouldn't drop a friendship because of it. Though I might not cultivate a new one quite as readily.

😮 Weren’t the asterisks in news articles a bit of a clue? Or are you Dutch? Shit doesn’t really seem to be a swear word in the Netherlands.

Though for obvious reasons I don’t dislike ‘trump’ as a euphemism, as much as I used to!

I’m sorry you’ve lost me? What asterisks? What article? Why might I be Dutch?

You’re right, I forgot about the shortage of exclamation marks, there was me using up precious resources - in my defence it was a clearly vain attempt to add the sort of value to the thread you clearly find so easy to do! Oh darn it, I did it again…

Oh that takes me back! My DM hated ‘shut up’ and never said it. We got ‘be quiet’. I followed suit and told mine that ‘shut up’ was rude. When MIL said it to one of them they both looked at me and she asked me what the problem was, so I told her it wasn’t a term we used. Awkward.

Swear words, including “shit” are usually asterisked in news articles as some people find them offensive. That’s why I’m surprised that anyone who grew up in the UK wouldn’t know that “shit” is a swear word.

The only place I know of where “shit” isn’t really a swear word is the Netherlands. I can easily imagine a Dutch person moving to the UK and having no idea it was an expletive here.

We had to say windypop 😂😂. Funnily enough my mum now has no issue using the word fart - she's in her 70s.

Personally I love guff and letting rip

I remember my mum was outraged when I sang "beans means farts" when I was about 12! Maybe she just didn't like to hear kids saying it. She certainly swore a bit herself!

I used to use “windy-pop” with my elder daughter when she was tiny. But after starting school, she started saying “I forted” and “someone did a fort”. I didn’t correct her as I preferred “fort”. Although inevitably her peers did after a while.