catch-fart

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>:

> Not in OED. but used by Aldous Huxley, famed wordsmith:
>
> 1948 A. Huxley _Ape and Essence_ (Rpt. N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1972) 34:
> Reason comes running, eager to ratify;/Comes, a catch-fart, with
> Philosophy, truckling to tyrants.
>
> But he didn't invent it:
>
> 1698-99 "B.E." _A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew_ (London: Hawes,
> Gilbourne & Davis) s.v.: _Catch-fart_, a Foot-Boy.
>
> Nor was he the last to use it:
>
> 2006  Dewey Lambdin _A King's Trade_ (N.Y.: St. Martin's) 31: The
> older fellow ...most-like would serve out his years as an humble
> "catch- fart" to shore-bound admirals.
>
> BTW, compared to _Ape and Essence_, Huxley's _Brave New World_ is a
> pretty sunny
> take on tomorrow.
>
> JL

Coincidentally, the next message in my inbox:

Reuters / Yahoo 7/31/08:

"World's oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC"

"The world's oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and
suggests that toilet humor was as popular with the ancients as it is today.

It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and
goes: 'Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young
woman did not fart in her husband's lap.'

It heads the world's oldest top 10 joke list published by the University of
Wolverhampton on Thursday."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080731/lf_nm_life/britain_joke_dc

SG

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