Pataphysics?

“Pataphysics, what’s that?”.

An excerpt from a woefully neglected book by Scott Slater and Alec Solomita, published by E. P. Dutton (1980), titled Exits: Stories of dying moments and parting words, may help answer your question:

“On December 10th, 1896, the city of Paris was outraged . . . and delighted by Alfred Jarry’s play, ‘Ubu Roi.’ The first word of the play, ‘Merdre’ (a play on the French word ‘merde,’ . . . variously translated as ‘shittre’ or ‘pshitt’) created a pandemonium in the crowded theater that lasted fifteen minutes. Many walked out; the rest of the audience separated vocally into two hysterical factions, some of whom came to blows . . . . The scatological classic played that one night and not again until 1908, a year after Jarry’s death.

“Jarry, only twenty-three in 1896, became an instant celebrity. He also became so obsessed with, and committed to, the character of Père Ubu that he virtually transformed himself into his king of Pataphysics (Jarry’s own science based on a sort of anti-reason). In the world of Père Ubu, everything is turned upside-down. So Jarry began all his meals with the dessert and ended with the appetizers. He adopted the character’s gestures and nasal tone. The language he began using (employing the royal ‘we’ and substituting nouns with descriptive phrases such as, for a bicycle: ‘that which rolls’; for a bird: ‘that which chirps’) is still heard in certain literary circles in Paris.”