
![Victorian Art Museum](/articles/images/origin-of-sayings.jpg)

The English language is full of nuanced sayings that are used almost imperceptibly every day and a lot of these
have some bizarre beginnings.

### Baker’s Dozen

A baker’s dozen is commonly understood to mean 13. Go back to Medieval England, and we get a some clarity regarding its origins.
Common law dictated that the price of bread was related to the cost of the wheat used in its production.
Any baker found to be selling overpriced buns (having a loaf) was subject to punishment, including large fines and flogging.
Thus, to account for anomalies in the baking process, bakers would bake an extra bap to ensure they were free from prosecution.

### Shambles

A shambles nowadays may be your common reply to the state of the country, but its origins are pretty
grimy. Butchers in the 17th century would display and sell their goods on a table or stall in the street, which was
known as a *shamble*. This led to the collective noun representing the street where butchers operated being known as
the *shambles* (the name survives in many roads to this day). However, as butchers would throw offal (don't ask) into the streets,
the meaning began to be associated with being a place of *untidiness or disorganisation*.

### Humble Pie

In the 14th century the *numbles* was the name given to the less appetizing parts of an animal.
The *numbles* were commonly used as a primary ingredient in pies given their relatively
low cost at the time, sowere often eaten by the lower classes, whilst the upper classes would take the more valued cuts. The adjective
*humble* was derived separately, meaning of lower class. The similarity in the two words likely led to its current
idiomatic meaning – *make a humble apology and accept humiliation*.

![Humble Pie](/articles/images/humble-pie.gif)

### Goodbye

This is relatively simple one, but interesting nonetheless. In the 15th century a common farewell was
‘*God be with thee*’. Over 300 years this eventually got compounded; ‘*God be with yee*’ in the 16th
century; ‘*God b'wee*’ in the 17th; and eventually ‘*Goodbye*’ by the 18th century.

### Beyond the Pale

What we know today as pale (light in colour) is far different from its now obsolete early English meaning – a
stake or pointed piece of wood, also known as a fencepost. In turn the *Pale* began to be associated with
the area enclosed by these pale posts, such as a settlement. Therefore, anyone wanting to go outside of these
safe areas were said to be going ‘*beyond the Pale*’ – to go outside agreed standard of decency.

### Nail Your Colours to the Mast

During nautical battles, the flag of a ship were struck (lowered) to surrender to the enemy – and was customary
for the enemy to direct the cannon towards the ships mast during a battle to disable it. If all the masts
were hit, the captain usually had little choice but to surrender. If however the captain decided to
fight on, the crew were ordered to hoist the colours on remnants of the ships rigging, said to be
‘*nailing the colours to the mast*’.

The first usage is linked to the *Venerable*, the flagship of British Admiral Adam Duncan, at the *Battle of Camperdown* in 1797.
The mainmast of the ship was struck by the Dutch enemy bringing down the ships flag, which could be interpreted by
the rest of the fleet as surrender. Jack Crawford, a sea-hand upon the ship, climbed the remains of the
splintered mast and nailed the standard back in place. With the standard intact, the fleet fought on and the
British were eventually victorious, with the battle penned as the ending of the Dutch dominance at sea and
the beginning of Britannia ruling the wave.

![Jack Sparrow](/articles/images/jack-sparrow.gif)

### Steal Someone's Thunder

Surprisingly, this idiom comes from a real event in the early 18th century. The petulant playwright
John Dennis devised a thunder machine that could be used during one of his plays - consisting of a sheet of tin
being rattled backstage (the joys of pre-television). Unfortunately, the play was a disaster and flopped (who'd have guessed),
yet a few days later he heard his machine in action during a rival performance of Macbeth. Upon the
discovery he shouted

> that is my thunder by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my plays

### Hair of the Dog

Anyone who’s woken up not knowing where they are has probably heard this one. But its original etymology
can be traced back as far as 2500BC in Northern Syria, from a book in which the God Ilu becomes hungover after a
drinking binge, and the recipe in which he is prescribed consists of ‘*hairs of a dog*’ and an unknown
plant mixed with olive oil (sounds incredible). The belief seems to stem from the idea that being bitten by a rabid dog could be
cured by ingesting a potion containing some of the dog’s fur.

![Dog with Incredible Perm](/articles/images/dog-hair.gif)

### Once in a Blue Moon

It is generally known to mean something highly irregular – originating from a clerical pamphlet
printed in 1528, where one of the characters converses to another

> if they say the mone is blewe, we must believe that it is true

It is likely in reference to the fact that priests at the time expected any statement
they made to their parish to be believed, no matter how farcical (no comment).

However, a blue moon is in fact possible. This occurred most notably after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883,
when the moon had a blue tinge for almost two years. Large ash particles in the atmosphere
that were released after the eruption, diffracted red light making the moon appear blue or slightly green.
Still, pretty rare.


The Origin of Sayings


**Lasers**. Not the type that you saw in those classic James Bond movies, slowly advancing
to the hero's groin. These are known as *Q-switched lasers* and are the most common way to remove
tattoos. Before getting to the removal stage however, it is important to understand how tattoos
remain in the body.

Tattooing involves inserting ink into the dermal tissue layer of the skin (found under the epidermis – the
outermost layer of the skin). Once the ink has entered - normally using a tattoo needle - the pigment begins to
disperse itself through the epidermis and the upper dermis. Once it has entered these layers of the skin, the
body sends out some of its billions of personal protection operatives for foreign agents – Brex... no, *Phagocytes*.

The main function of *Phagocytes* within the human body is to protect from harmful particles, and are
essential for shielding the human body from infections and providing subsequent immunity. They are attracted to
foreign particles by chemical signals released by bacteria or other *Phagocytes*, and when eventually
coming into contact with their target, they bind, and then engulf them. Herein lies the problem; the ink
particles are too big to be ingested by the Phagocytes, so instead are held in stasis in the layers of skin by
its *collagen* network (the skins main structural protein).

So now you may be beginning to get an inkling as to how tattoos can be removed. The aforementioned
*Q-switched lasers* emit a centralised burst of light, targeting a specific spectrum of colour represented
in the tattoo. This means that for tattoos with differing colours, multiple lasers must be used (looking at you Ed Sheeran).
The laser is fired at these pigments, and as it hits, they are heated up by thousands of degrees, eventually
emitting the contained energy as a shockwave in a process known as *Photothermolysis*. The shockwave
ripples through the dermis of the skin, causing weaker structures to break apart – such as the ink particles -
while larger, stronger ones, merely vibrate. Once the tattoo pigment has been broken up into small enough fragments,
the Phagocytes can then fully engulf and dispose of them. The whole process can take 6-8 sessions of laser
removal for a normal-sized tattoo, and up to 10 sessions for larger tattoos.

So, given the fact that over 1 in 4 individuals are reported as regretting ever getting a tattoo, there’s hope
on the horizon for your mate Dave with his ‘*NO RAGRETS*’ motif across his chest can still have some optimism.

> 3235*BC*: The oldest discovery of tattooed human skin to date is found on the body of Ötzi the Iceman.


The Wonders of Tattoo Removal


## The Formation of Clouds

Ever wondered how these wondrous 500,000 tonne masses (~3,000 houses) form and travel across the skyline each day? How come they
don’t seem to shrink when it rains? Why do they appear angelically white? All great questions, so let’s break it
down.

Clouds primarily consist of water droplets and ice crystals, small and light enough to float in the air; but how
did the water vapour get up there in the first place?

When water particles are heated to a sufficient degree, they evaporate into a gas known as water vapour.
During this transformation, the water vapour is able to absorb heat particles from
their surrounding area, cooling the original source down in the process. However, there's an issue. Air can only hold a
specific amount of water vapour at any given time, dependent on its temperature and weight – known as
atmospheric pressure. However, once it reaches its maximum threshold – known as the dew point - if a drop in temperature
or atmospheric pressure occurs, the only option is for this water vapour to convert from gas to liquid, via the
process of condensation.

The newly condensed water particles can cling onto the billions of tiny particles that are travelling in the air
at any given time, usually a piece of pollen or dust, collecting at a central point known as the condensation
nuclei. These small masses have a radius between a few microns (thousandths of a millimetre) to a few tens of
microns. When billions of these particles collect together they form a cloud. As these particles are so
minuscule, they are lightweight enough to not have any appreciable fall velocity, meaning they remain floating
in the air.

### Fogging Up

This however, still doesn't explain how rain-showers occur. As the water droplets in a cloud collide whilst
moving in the air, they start to gain greater mass up to a tipping point where they are no longer able to freely
float in the air and gravity begins to take control. If these droplets are sufficiently large enough when
leaving the cloud (0.1 millimetres in diameter) they can survive the fall to earth without evaporating in the
process. Yet, this only results in what we recognise commonly as drizzle in Europe.

Surprisingly, temperatures at cloud level are usually below 0ºC, yet the water droplets can remain in liquid
form by a process known as super cooling. This is because water can exist as liquid if there are no nucleation
centres – points for it to condense at. However, small collisions or the presence of a suitable ice nuclei can
cause the water droplets to freeze solid. Water vapour can more easily condense onto these frozen particles,
allowing them to grow faster than their surrounding compatriots and in turn fall sooner. As they fall through
warmer layers of the air they begin to melt, and eventually reach the ground as heavy rain. Amazingly, if these
particles form in a sufficiently thick cloud they can reach the ground before melting, leading to what we refer
to as hail or sleet.

### Why are they whiter than white?

Now onto the final question, why do they appear white? The primary reason is that light transmitted from the sun
is white. To expand further, visible light travels as a wave (part of the electromagnetic spectrum); which when
spread out – such as a rainbow - allows us to perceive every viewable colour (disregarding black as that occurs
through the absence of colour). Each of these visible colours has a different wavelength (e.g. blue has the
shortest wavelength at around 400 nanometres, whilst red is the longest at 700 nanometres). Smaller particles
are able to scatter shorter wavelengths present in the atmosphere around 16 times more efficiently than longer
ones – making the sky appear blue, whilst larger particles such as water droplets scatter all wavelengths
relatively equally meaning no colour predominates, known as Mie Scattering. This means that to the
human eye, clouds appear white.

This may raise one final question. So why do some clouds (normally before it rains) appear grey? When light
initially hits the water droplets gathered in a cloud, the light particles reflect back towards the sun or
scatter to the sides of the cloud, making the base (the perceivable side from the ground) of the cloud appear
grey. This is accentuated in rain clouds, where the condensation nuclei are larger, meaning less light from the
sun reaches the bottom of a cloud. This explains why if you’ve been on a flight, as the plane reaches its
maximum altitude all the clouds below appear to be pearly white.

So next time you’re on the way to work on a rainy day, you can give the scientific explanation to your boss as
to why you’re soaked through.

#### Clouds in History

> Clouds began to appear on items produced during the Zhou dynasty, considered to be a symbol of good fortune in China.

> Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Meteorologica, in which precipitation and the clouds from which precipitation fell
were called meteors, originating from the Greek word meteoros, meaning `high in the sky` and from this the modern term
meteorology, the study of clouds and weather.


A brief overview of the formation of clouds.

Every Cloud Has a Silver... what?


We’ve all done it. After a late night of tossing and turning, you wake up blurry-eyed and aggravated.
There's only one thing that's going to get you through a 9A.M. stand-up; a steaming cup of tea or coffee to kick-start your day.

However, have you ever thought about the chemical reactions that mug is having on your body?

As you traverse through the average day your Central Nervous System (CNS) releases a neurotransmitter called *adenosine*,
which, as one of its many functions, regulates your sleep-wake cycle by slowing down nerve activity. With a sufficient
build-up of adenosine within the brain, it begins to signal a feeling of fatigue to the rest of the body.

### So how does caffeine alleviate this?

Consumed caffeine is absorbed by the body’s small intestine and passed into the bloodstream. Due to its structural makeup –
being both water and fat soluble – it is able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier.

Caffeine’s molecular structure closely resembles that of *adenosine*, enabling it to lock and block the brains adenosine receptors,
acting as a competitive inhibitor. This intensifies cellular activity within the body, simultaneously increasing the body’s heart and breathing rate.
Additionally, the activation of neural circuits within the brain causes natural stimulants such as adrenaline and dopamine to be released.

After a period of continuous coffee consumption however, the brain grows additional adenosine receptors to try and maintain equilibrium.
Understandably, more caffeine is required over time, to block a number of the newly grown receptors to produce a similar desired effect.


Bite the bullet and learn something new

How can 'permanent' ink be unwritten?

A brief overview of the formation of clouds.

Let's steam it over