mare's fart

• Mare's Fart (commonly capitalized)

From mare + 's + fart. A nickname stemming from the unpleasant smell of the plant's leaves. Primarily used by cattle farmers in North Shropshire and Cheshire.^[1]

mare's fart (plural mare's farts)

1. A nickname for a type of flower.
   1. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) Ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris).
      • 1998, Mabey, Richard, Flora Britannica - The Concise Edition‎^[[1], page 16:

        [...] ragwort posed the principle weed problem, many fields being heavily infested. The still-used local [name] of mare’s fart in adjacent North Shropshire and Cheshire [...] suggest how loathed the malodorous foliage is by cattle farmers.

      • 2016, Hoyland, Graham, Walking through spring : an English journey‎^[2], page 226:

        Ragwort’s other [name] of ‘mare’s fart’ refer[s] to the sharp smell of the leaves, caused by alkaloids. These can cause liver damage to horses, but only if fed dried in fodder, as the sharp taste of the fresh plant deters horses in the field.

      • 2018, Machinery Industry Press, English Proficiency Test‎^[3], page 311:

        Today I want to talk about a stimulating plant that is known by such flattering aliases as “Stinking Ninny” and “Mare’s Fart". It's called ragwort, and although it is a flower, it's definitely not the type you want to give your wife on Valentine's Day.

      • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:mare's fart.
   2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) A nickname for any of several other types of flowers, including the fleabane and dandelion.
      • 1996, McDonald, James, The Wadsworth dictionary of obscenity & taboo‎^[4], page 50:

        Dating from the middle of the last century, the expression ‘like a fart in a colander’ is still in common use to indicate restlessness or any flustered aimless activity. So too, in some dialects the traditional name mare’s fart is still used for the plant otherwise known as fleabane.

      • 2003, Bryson, Nill, A Short History Of Nearly Everything‎^[5], page 435:

        The dandelion was long popularly known as the ‘pissabed’ because of its supposed diuretic properties, and other names in everyday use included mare’s fart, [...] open arse and bum-towel. One or two of these earthy appellations may unwittingly survive in English yet.

      • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:mare's fart.
2. (idiomatic, vulgar, chiefly in the negative) Something of no value, importance, or consequence whatsoever; a thing utterly not cared about.

   See also: give a damn, give a tinker's damn, give a rat's arse, give a fig

   • 1956, Heinrich Wittenwile, “The Courtship”, in Ring‎^[6], page 7:

     Your lamentation grieves me. See here, in the name of a mare’s fart! If my horse has fallen, why should I be blamed?

   • 1974, Horgan, Paul, Far from Cibola‎^[7], page 16:

     Andrew Lark deliberately avoided looking down at Nona, for that might suggest to her that he cared as much as a trotting mare’s fart what he thought of her fears.

   • 2002, Feintuch, David, The King‎^[8], page 351:

     I had no place to go, no one within twenty leagues who gave a brood mare’s fart if I lived […]

• “mare's fart”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• mare's fart on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Jacobaea vulgaris on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Category:Jacobaea vulgaris on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons