פלוץ (plots) — fart

Etymology

The ancient Semitic languages all had words for flatulence that descended from a common Proto-Semitic root. Arabic has dharta, Aramaic has erat, and Akkadian had zaratu — all clearly related, pointing to a proto-Semitic root with final resh and tet. In Arabic, the initial consonant is a voiced emphatic dh; in Aramaic and Akkadian a pharyngeal ayin or tsade; in Hebrew the cognate would have been something like tsirta or tsarta, reconstructed through comparative Semitics. Ezekiel 8:17 preserves a likely euphemism: "they are sending the branch (zemorah) to their nose," which a 10th-century commentator named Reu'el (in a Cairo Geniza manuscript discovered in 1978) explicitly glossed as referring to people "letting wind out from underneath" pointing toward the Temple.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, aware of this linguistic reconstruction, tried to introduce the form tsirta in one of his early dictionaries. It never caught on. The formal term נפיחה (lit. "blowing") was introduced by Torczyner (later Tur-Sinai) and Lazer in their German-Hebrew dictionary of 1927, finding the word in Rashi's commentary on Tractate Berakhot 24a. But נפיחה was too polite for daily use.

What took hold instead was פלוץ — first documented by Daniel Persky in the Hebrew Language Committee's journal Leshonenu in 1934, where he noted it was then new and popular among children. The most likely origin is a corruption of the German Furz with the substitution of resh → lamed, a common phonetic shift. In the same article, Persky documented another synonym: נֹאד, derived from the idiom "נאד נפוח" (inflated wineskin, used metaphorically for a pompous person) — connecting the idea of puffed-up self-importance with the release of gas, a parallel found independently in English, where flatulent describes both physical gas and verbal hot air.

The lexical family was extended in 1996 when author Amnon Dankner apparently coined the word פַלְצָן (a habitual farter) in his story collection The Summer of Rina Ouster. The opening story, "A Short Biography of a Man of the Spirit: In Place of a Preface," tells the tale of Joseph Pujol — "a paltsan, or more precisely, an artist of the posterior blow" — a real historical performer who entertained audiences with musical flatulence. Dankner used the character as a self-deprecating metaphor: by presenting himself as a paltsan, he preemptively deflected the charge that his own work as a cultural journalist was "pulled from somewhere uncomfortable." From Dankner's book, פלצן entered the general language.

Key Quotes

"על שימוש במילה זאת דיווח לראשונה דניאל פרסקי בכתב העת של ועד הלשון העברית ׳לשוננו׳ ב-1934. על פי פרסקי בעת הכתיבה מילה זאת הייתה חדשה ומקובלת בפי ילדים." — אילון גלעד, מהשפה פנימה

Timeline

• Biblical era: A euphemism (zemorah) possibly refers to flatulence in Ezekiel 8:17
• 10th century: Commentator Reu'el (Cairo Geniza manuscript, discovered 1978) explicitly glosses the verse as referring to flatulence
• Early 20th century: Ben-Yehuda attempts to introduce tsirta from reconstructed Proto-Semitic — fails
• 1927: Torczyner and Lazer introduce נפיחה in German-Hebrew dictionary as formal term
• 1934: Persky documents פלוץ in Leshonenu as children's slang; also documents נֹאד
• 1978: Geniza manuscript purchased by National Library, confirming the צרט root
• 1996: Dankner coins פלצן in The Summer of Rina Ouster

Related Words

• נפיחה — formal Hebrew term (from root נ.פ.ח, to blow); introduced 1927; too polite for everyday use
• נאד — slang synonym derived from "נאד נפוח" (inflated wineskin = pompous person)
• פלצן — a habitual farter; coined by Amnon Dankner (1996)
• צרטה — the reconstructed proto-Hebrew form proposed by Ben-Yehuda; never adopted