Tegan

So you know how I love my musical apparatus for our chats, Norman?

I've got my med diet bell here on the desk with me today.

I forgot to bring my harmonica and my xylophone because I'm an idiot, but I did bring an extra new friend.

Would you like to hear it?

It's a whoopee cushion.

We bought it especially for this particular episode of What's That?

Rash.

That's right.

This chat comes from our recent live show at World Science Festival Brisbane.

So this question came from John, who the question itself was read out by a lovely audience member at our live show.

John, you've asked that question so well.

I'm going to give you a round of applause.

So on that, do you know it's a little bit like, you know how we call cow meat beef and pig meat pork and that sort of thing?

And I don't know if anyone's heard this story before.

It's the reason we would do this is because after the Norman Conquest, it was sort of fancier to speak in French.

So around the table, you would say the French word for cow, which was like boeuf.

which became beef, or you would say the fancy word for pig, which was like porcine.

And so in a similar way, the word fart comes from Old English and Old German.

The word was fjorten, which meant to, like, fart.

It was probably an onomatopoeia.