be both singular and plural. In Horace (Satires 1.8.37), a talking statue of Priapus says: ("But if I'm telling a lie, may my head be spattered with the white droppingsof ravens, and may Julius, delicate Pediatia, and the thief Voranuscome to piss and shit on me!") In one of his verse fables (4.18.25), Phaedrus speaks of some dogs who have had their backsides deodorised with perfume. But on hearing thunder, ("suddenly they shit out the perfume mixed with turds") The word can also be used in a metaphorical sense, as at Martial 3.17, speaking of a pastry which had been blown on by a man with impure breath (caused no doubt by oral sex) to cool it down: ("But nobody could touch it: it was a piece of shit'''.") Synonyms and metaphors The politer terms for in Classical Latin were (gen. ), "manure" and or , "filth." was used frequently in the Vulgate, as in its well-known translation of Psalm 112:7: (Psalm 113:7 in the KJV.) ("Raising up the needy from the earth : and lifting up the poor out of the dunghill." DRC) In Classical Latin, , plural , meant the dregs, such as are found in a bottle of wine; the word did not acquire the sense of feces until later. In the Romance languages is productive in the Romance languages, and is the etymon of French merde, Spanish mierda, and in Vegliot Dalmatian miarda. It is preserved unaltered in Catalan, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, and Sardinian. It was preserved in Romanian too, not for feces, where căcat (derived from caco) is used instead, but in the word dezmierda, originally meaning "to clean the bottom of (an infant)"; subsequently becoming "to cuddle" or "to fondle". and : passing wind is the basic Latin word for passing intestinal wind. In the Sermones 1.8, 46, Horace writes: Christopher Smart translates this passage as "from my cleft bum of fig-tree I let out a fart, which made as great an explosion as a burst bladder". The "I" of this satire is the god Priapus, and Smart explains that he was made of fig-tree wood which split through being poorly prepared. Martial also uses the word several times, including the following (10.15): ("I don't see any other reason why I should believe you a friend, other than that you are in the habit of farting in front of me, Crispus.") A word ("to