a. Also 7 flatilent. [a. F. flatulent, ad. mod.L. flātulent-us, f. L. flāt-us a blowing, f. flāre to blow: see -ULENT.]
† 1. Of a windy nature, full of air or wind. Of a tumor: Turgid with air. Obs.
1600. Surflet, Countrie Farme, VI. xxii. 773. The vnprofitable and excrementous humour consumed, and the flatulent or windie parts thereof discussed.
1704. F. Fuller, Med. Gymn. (1705), 70. The Contents of the Stomach are much rarefi’d and flatulent, and the Steel is apt to cause Distensions and Gripes, and other troublesome Symptoms.
a. 1713. Quincy, Lex. Physico-Med. (1730), Flatulent Tumours are such as easily yield to the Pressure of the Finger, but readily return, by their elasticit, to a tumid State again.
1745. Brownrigg, in Phil. Trans., LV. 238. Neither ought we, because those spirits of fountains are flatulent and elastic, from thence to infer, that they agree with common air in every other respect, as many are apt to imagine.
2. Liable to, or prolific in, windy blasts, rare.
1671. R. Bohun, Wind, 65. The Spring and Autumn, especially about the time of either Aequinox, are the most Flatulent seasons of the yeere.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Bagman’s Dog.
| Propell’d by the force | |
| Of those flatulent folks known in Classical story as | |
| Aquilo, Libs, Notus, Auster, and Boreas. |
3. Generating or apt to generate gas in the alimentary canal; causing wind.
1599. H. Buttes, Dyets drie Dinner, C ijb. Peaches…. Being soft, moist, and flatulent, they engender humours very subiect to corruption: euil for old, flegmaticke and weake stomackes.
1674–81. Blount, Glossogr., s.v., Pease and Beans are flatulent meat.
1731. Arbuthnot, Aliments, vi. (1735), 221. Vegetables abound more with aerial Particles, than animal Substances, and therefore are more flatulent.
1837. M. Donovan, Dom. Econ., II. 321. Eaten in quantity it [beet-root] often proves flatulent.
4. a. Of a disease, etc.: Attended with or caused by the accumulation of gases in the alimentary canal. b. Of persons: Troubled with flatulence: see FLATULENCE 2.
1655. Culpepper, Riverius, VII. i. 147. Whence comes a flatulent Asthma.
1732. Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, 372. If they are not flatulent, several have been cur’d by a Milk-Diet, but it will do hurt when there is Acidity in the Stomach.
1844–57. G. Bird, Urin. Deposits (ed. 5), 310. Being merely the subject of occasional attacks of indigestion, with flatulent eructations.
1847. Youatt, Horse, xiv. 300. Flatulent Colic…. It is not spasm of the bowels, but inflation of them from the presence of gas emitted by undigested food.
absol. 1838. Copland, Dict. Pract. Med., III. I. 550. At all periods of life, functional intermissions of the pulse may occur, although most frequently in advanced age, in the dyspeptic, the flatulent, and the sedentary.
5. fig. Inflated or puffed up, ‘windy’; empty, vain, pretentious.
1658. Osborn, Adv. Son (1673), 237. Where the seeds of good works are not mixed, Religion grows flatulent and Hypocritical: It being far easier and cheaper to refrain open and negative Sins, than to perform the more chargeable affirmative duties of Charity.
1697. Dryden, Æneis, Ded. e 4. How many of those flatulent Writers have I known, who have sunk in their Reputations, after Seven or Eight Editions of their Works?
1742. Young, Nt. Th., vi. 239. Flatulent with fumes of self-applause.
1863. N. & Q., 3rd Ser. IV. 284. Much of the poetry is little more than very flatulent declamation; yet it would be unjust to deny there are many lines above average merit.
1870. Swinburne, Ess. & Stud. (1875), 261. A score or two of ‘poems,’ each more feeble and more flatulent than the last.
Hence Flatulently adv., in a flatulent manner; Flatulentness, the condition of being flatulent.
1563. T. Gale, Antidotarie, II. 39. It … healeth flatulentnes of Hypochondria, &c.
1727. Bailey (vol. II.), Flatulentness, Windiness, Flatulency.
1864. Webster, Flatulently.
