The Wise Book of Whys (17 page)

Why Homosexual People are Called “Gay”

The word “gay” seems to have its origins around the twelfth century in England, derived from the Old French word “gai,” which in turn was probably derived from a Germanic word, though that isn’t known for certain. The word’s original meaning meant something to the effect of “joyful,” “carefree,” “full of mirth,” or “bright and showy.”

However, around the early parts of the
seventeenth century, the word began to be associated with immorality. By the mid-seventeenth century, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary
, the meaning of the word had changed to mean, “addicted to pleasures and dissipations. Often euphemistically: Of loose and immoral life.” This is an extension of one of the original meanings of “carefree,” meaning more or less “uninhibited.”

Fast-forward to the nineteenth
century and the word “gay” had evolved to refer to a woman who was a prostitute and, funny enough, a gay man was someone who slept with a lot of women, often prostitutes. Also at this time, the phrase “gay it” meant to have sex.

With these new definitions, the original meanings of “carefree
,” “joyful,” and “bright and showy” were still around; so the word was not exclusively used to refer to prostitutes or a promiscuous man. Those were just accepted definitions, along with the other meanings of the word.

Around the 1920s and 1930s, however, the word started to have a new meaning. In terms of the sexual meaning of the word, a “gay man” no longer just meant a man who had sex with a lot of women, but now started to refer to men who had sex with other men
. There was also another phrase “gey cat” at this time which meant “homosexual boy.”

By 1955, “gay” had popularly acquired the new
ly added definition of “homosexual male.” Gay men themselves seem to have been behind the driving thrust for this new definition as they felt (and most still do) that “homosexual” was much too clinical sounding and thus is often thought of as slightly offensive among gay people due to sounding like a disorder.

As such, it was common amongst themselves to refer to one another as “gay” decades before this was a popularly known definition (reportedly homosexual men were calling one another “gay” as early as the 1920s)
. At this time, homosexual women were still referred to as “lesbians,” not gay. Although, women could still be called “gay” if they were prostitutes as that meaning had not yet wholly disappeared.

Since then, “gay
,” meaning “homosexual male,” has steadily driven out all the other definitions that have floated about through time, and it has gradually begun supplementing the word “lesbian” as referring to women who are homosexual.

Why Leaves Change Color in the Autumn

The primary thing that triggers the changing of colors in leaves is the length of day. However, moisture and temperature play a role as well. For instance, an extreme drought in the summer can delay, somewhat, the changing of the colors in autumn. Why this is the case is not wholly understood, but it is possibly from the tree not being able to make as much food to store up for the winter, in the case of the drought, so it might be trying to push the envelope a little in terms of making food for a couple more weeks before needing to shed the leaves.

Temperature also plays a part in the ultimate vividness of the color
. However, as far as the timing of the change goes, it seems to play only a small role given that trees of the same species at very high elevations, where it is colder, will have their leaves change color at nearly the same time as those of the same species at lower elevations on the same latitude line.

Primarily though, as the length of d
ay shortens, at a certain point that varies by species, some mechanism in the tree will trigger it to begin the process of closing up the veins to the leaves and eventually shedding them, lest they freeze while the veins are still open which can potentially harm the tree.

There are three main things that give leaves their color
. Those are: chlorophyll (green), which is necessary for photosynthesis; carotenoids, such as carotene and xanthophylls, which produce the orange and yellow colors, but whose roles are not entirely understood; and anthocyanins, which give us the shades of red and purple.

In the former two cases of chlorophyll and carotenoids, they are both present in the leaves during the summer, but the chlorophyll more or less
drowns out the carotenoids, so you see a mostly green leaf, rather than orange or yellow. The anthocyanins, on the other hand, are primarily produced as a result of glucose that is trapped in the leaves when the veins are closed off. These sugars then break down as a result of sunlight and produce the red and purple pigments.

During the summer, the plant is continually producing chlorophyll to aid in the production of glucose, which the tree uses for food
. Once the day length decreases sufficiently, the tree gradually starts to decrease the production of chlorophyll and the veins to the leaves slowly close off. When this happens, what you have left is the carotenoids and, depending on the species and environmental factors, possibly the produced anthocyanins.

Why Breathing Helium Changes the Sound of Your Voice

First, it is necessary to explain a little about how you actually generate sound via your voice box.
The air in your lungs gets pushed up by the relaxation of your diaphragm. It then goes through your trachea and out a small orifice that has two folds of skin (vocal cords) on either side of it, in the shape of a V. This is called your larynx or voice box. As the muscles that attach to your voice box tense and relax, they create a vibration of the cords. As these cords vibrate, they release pulses of air. The tension in these muscles creates the differences in frequency. The higher the tension, the higher the frequency and therefore the higher the pitch. This frequency is measured in hertz (how many times per second this repeats). For example, nearly all human speech sounds usually range from approximately 200 hertz to 8,000 hertz. Meaning the sound waves vibrate at approximately 200 to 8,000 times per second.

Once out of the voice box, the air travels into the area of your mouth that can be informally known as your vocal tract. As you manipulate your tongue, jaw and lips, you can change the resonant frequencies created by your vocal cords, allowing you to make the many different sounds of speech.

Together, the sound we hear created by air flowing at different frequencies and resonances creates our voices. One other factor affecting pitch is the thickness of one’s vocal cords. The thicker the folds of skin are, the deeper the voice. This is due to the amount of mass your chords have that the air has to manipulate. As you would expect, men tend to have much thicker folds of skin then women.

So now
let’s talk about the air that comes out of your lungs. The number of molecules in a fixed volume of gas, like the volume of air in your lungs, does not change with the type of gas (assuming the pressures are reasonably low). As long as the temperature and the pressure are the same, it does not matter whether it is helium or air; the number of molecules is the same. The mass of those molecules is then measured by atomic weight. Atomic weight is a dimensionless physical quantity (which is why it works so well for a gas that does not necessarily have a given dimension). It is the ratio of the average mass of atoms of an element compared to one-twelfth of the mass of an atom of carbon-12. All that basically means is the higher the number, the heavier the gas.

Helium has an atomic weight of 4.002602. Air which is approximately 80% Nitrogen, has differing characteristics depending on the environment. (for instance if you live in Los Angeles its about 9
9.99% car exhaust…)  Because of this, air’s actual atomic weight is impossible to precisely define. However, it is generally about seven times heavier than helium.

So why the perceived difference in your voice with helium? The answer lies in how sound waves travel through a given gas. The more dense, or heavier, the gas, the slower the sound wave will travel. Helium is much lighter than air. The speed of a sound wave through helium will then be much higher. So by inhaling helium and using it as the source of the perceived sound, you are simply increasing the speed or frequency of your voice. You are not changing the pitch, since your vocal chords are vibrating at the same speed as when you are using air. You are also not changing the configuration of your vocal tract. So while the base frequency of the chords remains the same, the frequency of the sound heard by others is increased due to the wave traveling through helium much faster than through air.

Why Certain Types of Traps are Called “Booby Traps”

It turns out
this has nothing to do with the mammaries of the fairer sex, but rather has its origins in the Spanish word “bobo,” meaning “stupid,” “fool,” or “naïve.” This Spanish word in turn comes from the Latin “balbus” meaning “stammering”, which to the Romans was thought to be a sign of stupidity.

So, essentially
, a “booby trap” is a trap that “boobies,” or idiots, are the victims of. Around the same time this first popped up, we also had expressions like “booby prize,” meaning a prize given to a fool. These prizes were usually something completely valueless and often given to the loser of some competition, with the first instance of this appearing in the late nineteenth century.

In the early days, “booby traps” were just simple pranks
. As you might expect, the first known instances of this applied to school boys pulling pranks on one another, with the victim then being considered a booby or fool.

For instance, one of the earliest known instances of “booby trap” appeared in the 1868
Chambers Journal
where it stated: "A 'booby-trap' - it consisted ... of books, boots, etc., balanced on the top of a door, which was left ajar, so that the first incomer got a solid shower-bath.”

Fast-forward about a half a century and booby traps got a lot more deadly with the WWI usage of calling deadly explosive traps “booby traps
.”