Popcorn fart

Posted by ESC on February 26, 2009 at 16:54

In Reply to: Popcorn fart posted by ESC on February 25, 2009 at 13:14:

: : Does anyone know where the saying "smaller than a popcorn fart" got started. Also "smells like a popcorn fart".

: I haven't heard those versions. But a similar phrase dates from the early 1970s. Memory is a funny thing. I can't remember people's names or much of anything else. But I almost always remember when I first heard a phrase. My roommate in Huntington, W.Va., around 1970 said her father used the expression "dryer than..."

Popcorn fart -- in phrase "dry as" or "dryer than a popcorn fart." 1995 seWI (Wisconsin), as of around 1960, If a thing was very dry, my father would characterize it as dryer than a popcorn fart. From "Dictionary of American Regional English," Volume IV by Joan Houston Hall (2002, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England). Page 280.