Bang
(pronounced bhang)
(1) A loud,
sudden, explosive noise (such as the discharge of a firearm).
(2) A
resounding stroke or blow.
(3) In informal,
use, a sudden movement, show of energy or instance of something suggesting
great value, energy, vitality or spirit (source of many idiomatic forms such as
“started with a bang”, “went off with a bang”, “great bang for the buck” etc).
(4) Suddenly
and loudly; abruptly or violently.
(5) In
figurative use, precisely; directly; right (such as “bang on” or “bang in the
middle” (ie exactly correct” or “bang to rights” (caught red-handed; guilty as
sin).
(6) In informal
use, a sudden or intense pleasure; thrill or excitement (now less common).
(7) In
slang, various senses of precision such as “bang off” (instantly; right away)
or “bang on” (marvelous; perfect; just right).
(8) In
vulgar slang, the act or instance of sexual intercourse (with many variants,
the most infamous the gangbang).
(9) In the
jargon of mining, civil engineering etc, the physical explosive product.
(10) In the
slang of drug users, an injection or other form of dose of a narcotic; a shot
of heroin which proved lethal.
(11) In US
criminal class clang, to participate in street gang criminal activity.
(12) In the
slang of typology & the printing trade, an exclamation point, a variant
being the interrobang (a punctuation mark (‽) which merges the question mark (?) and the
exclamation mark (!) to indicate a query made as an interjection).
(13) In
Irish slang, a strong smell (often used of halitosis (chronic bad breath)).
(14) In
regional slang (limited apparently to the New England region in the US), an
abrupt left-turn by a road-user (Boston, Massachusetts) or a left, right or
U-turn (more generalized); the typical use is “bang a left/right/uey”. The equivalent
use in Australia & New Zealand is “hang a left/right/uey” although there a
U-turn is known also as a “U-bolt”.
(15) In
regional slang (limited apparently to urban areas in Nigeria), to fail an exam.
(16) In mathematics,
a factorial (on the basis the factorial of n is often written as n!)
(17) In the
jargon of financial markets, rapidly or in high volumes suddenly to sell (an
equity, commodity, currency etc), causing prices to fall.
(18) In the
jargon of hairdressing, as bangs, a number of variants of the fringe.
(19) In
reggae music, an offbeat figure played usually on guitar and piano.
(20) In
vulgar slang, to have sexual intercourse with (sometimes with the implication
of “without consent”.
(21) To
strike or beat resoundingly; to pound; to strike violently or noisily.
(22) To hit
or painfully to pump.
(23) To
throw or set down roughly; to slam.
1540-1550: From
the Middle English bangen, from the Old
English bangian or borrowed from the Old
Norse banga (to pound, hammer), both
from the Proto-Germanic bangōną (to
beat, pound), from the primitive Indo-European ben- (to
beat, hit, injure). It was cognate with Scots bang & bung (to
strike, bang, hurl, thrash, offend), the Icelandic banga (to pound, hammer), the Old Swedish bånga (to hammer (from which modern Swedish gained banka (to knock, pound, bang), the Danish
banke (to beat) & bengel (club), the Low German bangen, & bangeln (to strike, beat) (the German dialect banken may originally have been imitative), the West Frisian bingel & bongel, the Dutch bengel
(bell; rascal) and the German Bengel (club)
& bungen (to throb, pulsate). Bang is a noun, verb & adverb, banged is
a verb & adjective, banger is a noun, banging is a noun, verb &
adjective; the noun plural is bangs.
Of the universe
The origin
of the term “Big Bang Theory” (which describes a model accounting for the
origin and most of the dynamics of the (present) universe during the last 14
billion years-odd) is traced to a chance remark by English astrophysicist Sir
Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) on BBC Radio in 1949 but it wasn’t until the late 1960s
it came widely to be used in scientific circles and a few more years before it
was part of the common public language.
Hoyle always denied he’d intended to be disparaging of what was then a
theory some 30 years old and this most historians came to accept although certainly he was unconvinced of the idea’s soundness and for some decades
clung to his preferred “steady state” model of the universe. The steady state position is sometimes misunderstood
as something like “twas ever thus”
but is better understood as “constant process”, the crucial difference that
while the steady staters held matter constantly was being created as the
universe expands, the big bangers believed the distance between the matter
which came into existence a fraction of a second after the big bang increased
as the universe expanded from its one-time singularity. Hoyle never quite became a big banger but as
the evidence mounted, he modified his model to become what was dubbed “a quasi steady stater” although his
increasingly convoluted explanations forcing observations to somehow fit his belief
convinced few. The criticism of Hoyle
was he made cosmology into a kind of theology.
Noted
golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) is active on Instagram and recently posted a “Life
update” to her four million followers, advising “I have bangs now”. Hopefully, she will keep us informed and
there will be more to come. For golfers,
she has posted a set of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies which are
guides for both the experienced wishing to hone their techniques and those
taking up the sport. Being highly
qualified, she filled one gap in the instructional market with a collection of
tips for “busty golfers” (specific weight distribution a significant element as
the body pivots when swinging a club). On
Instagram, in less than 24 hours, the clip garnered over 2.6 million views. Hoyle's use of
the term “big bang” while it did graphically emphasise the difference of
opinion between the two schools of thought, was unfortunate as a contribution
to public understanding because of the connotations of the words “big” & “bang”, most
imagining the origins of the universe as starting with a huge, noisy explosion
whereas what was envisaged by the theorists was a sudden “cosmic inflation” (of space), a
process which continues and was in the 1990s found to be accelerating although
not everywhere equally. The big bang theory is
now the orthodoxy in the mainstream scientific community though some questions
remain unanswered including the mystery of why, based on a number of
calculations which explain many other things, over 90% of the universe’s matter
is “missing” (or at least can’t be observed).
The fudge to “explain” that has been the twin concepts of “dark matter”
and “dark energy” which are more “speculative concepts” than a theoretical
model and best understood as an elegant way of saying “don’t know”. There have been
a number of suggestions to account for the “missing matter”, the most
intriguing being the notion the calculated “matter number” might be too high
because of “drag effect” created by the operation of time itself. Time obviously is important otherwise
everything would happen at the same time and who knows what else it does; recently,
particle physicists reported having witnessed pinpricks of darkness moving faster than the speed of light without breaking the laws of relativity so
there's much still to be understood.
Of cars
Big banger
and old banger: John Greenwood (1945-2015) in “Spirit of ’76” Chevrolet
Corvette, Le Mans 24 Hour, June 1976 (left) and a despondent Lindsay Lohan with
Herbie while in “old banger” state, Herbie:
Fully Loaded (2005), the Corvette an “8-banger” and the Beetle a “4-banger”. The Corvette
was powered by a 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block V8 and although forced to
retire after a failure in the fuel delivery system, while it was running,
nothing in the field could match the mark of 222 mph (354 km/h) it set thundering
down the then 6 km (3.7 mile) Mulsanne straight. In 1976, Mulsanne had yet to be distorted by
the silly chicanes added in 1990 at the behest of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International
Automobile Federation, world sport's dopiest regulatory body)).
With cars,
“banger” proved productive. Because an
ICE (internal combustion engine) always includes a “power stroke” (or its equivalence),
in which the fuel-air mix explodes (the combustion causing “a bang” which sequentially is
the sound from the exhaust system; to aficionados sometimes a pleasing tone,
sometimes not), in slang, vehicles came to be described by the cylinder count
thus (most frequently “4-banger”, “6-banger” or “8-banger”). However, a car could also be a “big banger”
(one with a large displacement ICE, usually a V8 with the appellation coming from the “big-block” era of the post-war years when Detroit mass-produced engines with pistons the size of paint cans) or an “old banger” (one old,
worn out or battered”. Old banger was
synonymous with “clunker”, “beater”, “hooptie”, “jalopy”, “wreck”, “crock”, “shitbox”,
“rustbucket” etc and the dubbing came either from the appearance (“banged up”
in the sense of being dented or damaged) or the “banging” noise (backfiring, a
damaged exhaust system etc) the dilapidated machines emanated.
Of sausages and such
Unrelated
to ICEs, a banger could be (1) one who bangs (in any sense (sex, violence etc),
(2) the penis (3) a sausage (the use reputedly based originally not on any resemblance
to a penis but, dating from the time when they were produced by encasing the
contents in the intestine casings of slaughtered animals (often sheep), the
combination of excess water in the mix and the impervious skin making them susceptible to
exploding if not punctured prior to being cooked), (4) the breasts of a female
(and thus usually in the plural) and (5) in popular music a highly rated song
(some of which would be enjoyed by (6) headbangers (that subset of music fans who
“dance” by violently shaking their heads in time to the music)).
Rolling Stone magazine No.169, September 12, 1974. Rolling Stone and Playboy magazine in the 1960s & 1970s attracted a large audience of the market segments attractive to advertisers and alongside the content with which both most were associated, they attracted respectable authors to write about politics and interview subjects such as
celebrity philosophers and Nazi war criminals.
As well as
being a noun plural “Bangs” is also a proper noun as a surname, the most noted
being Lester Bangs (1948–1982) who in the late 1960s began to write reviews of
popular music, prompted by an advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine inviting
reader submissions. He wouldn’t have
thought what he criticized was “pop” and Rolling
Stone magazine (first published in 1967) was one of a number of titles that
created an ecosystem in which classifications proliferated with clear “hierarchies
of respectability” evolving among those who regarded “pop” as a serious musical
form and Bangs definitely was one of them; before the mid-1960s, popular music usually
wasn’t written about with the tone of reverence afforded to jazz, opera, the
avant-garde and such. Bangs died a
drug-related death although not the traditionally “messy” one associated with
the field he critiqued. Having contracted
influenza, he was self-medicating with an opioid analgesic and a benzodiazepine;
his overdose was ruled “accidental”.
Of hair
In
hairdressing, the noun “bangs” is used to describe a number of variants of the fringe
(or sections of hair) cut straight across the forehead, the derived verb used
as “to bang the hair”. Sometimes there
are “left and right” bangs but even when a style wholly is a conventional
fringe the convention is to speak of “bangs”, although hairdressers, especially
when constructing something asymmetric, will refer to the “left” or “right”
bang. Although there are on the internet
claims the use is based on the notion of a clipped hair “bursting out” (ie “explosively”
in a figurative sense and thus based on “bang” in the sense of something
sudden), verified evidence confirms “bangs” joined the rich jargon of
hairdressing late in the nineteenth century as a clipping (get it?) of “bang-tail”,
a term then used for decades in used in equestrian circles to described a
horse’s tail being allowed to grow long and then cut (docked) straight across (the
painless cut called a “bang-off”).
Apparently with origins in Scotland before spreading south and across
the Atlantic, it joined “gee-up” as a phrase with equine roots enjoying a
re-purposing for wider use. The OED
cites the first use of “bang” for the cutting of human hair to 1878 and within
half-a-decade US newspapers and periodicals had adopted the plural form “bangs”
when referring to a straight-across cut of hair on the forehead. It was in the late 1880s the imaginative use “lunatic
fringe” was coined (a century later to become a popular name for hairdressing
salons) and “fringe” remained the dominate use in the UK and much of the Commonwealth
while the US opted for the punchier “bangs”.
As a tool of US linguistic imperialism, the internet in the twenty-first
century did its job and throughout the English-speaking world, bangs now
peacefully co-exists with fringe with youth tending to the former.
Takes
on Cleopatra with bangs long & short.
Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) in Cleopatra (1963, left) and
Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) in Liz & Dick (2012). Based on period sculptures, it seems likely the
queen had curly hair but because of the prevalence of their appearance on women
in surviving art from Ancient Egypt, bangs became entrenched in the public’s
imagination of Cleopatra and film directors accordingly complied. While it's true that the look (on men and women) does appear on much surviving imagery from Ancient Egypt it must be remembered that then, as now, public art was not necessarily representative of the appearance of the wider population although it probably did align with that of the elites. Also, the as the archaeological records make clear, the consistency of style (straight-cut bangs (ie a horizontal fringe) across the forehead with hair apparently perfect (often shoulder-length and symmetrical) which appears dense, geometric, and highly regular was achieved with the use of wigs of human hair, wool, or plant fibres. Carefully constructed and styled into clearly repeatable forms, the blunt bangs, at least among certain parts of society, must have been an enduring fashion statement.
The “bang” technique with origins in equine grooming is used with ponytails and is called the “straight blunt cut”; for this purpose the only substantive difference between a “pony's tail” and a “ponytail” is scale.
While,
whether of human fringes or horses' tails, “bangs” might be a nineteenth
century coining, the hair style is as ancient as humanity, the prehistoric
origins doubtlessly a simple expedient to keep the hair from dangling in the
eyes, the trim presumably a tiresome task in the era before scissors. From that humble beginning evolved eventually
the array of styles now available, at least some of which allegedly have been a
political statements of group solidarity.
A fine “brief history of bangs” is maintained by Odele Beauty (their
“Rinse Blog” an indispensable source of technical information) and there it’s
claimed Cleopatra’s (Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ (“Cleopatra
father-loving goddess” in the Koine
Greek); circa 69 BC–circa 10 BC, Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom
of Egypt from 51-30 BC and the last active Hellenistic pharaoh) “famous fringe is apparently a myth”
although on the basis of surviving art, it seems likely Ancient Egyptians “wore blunt-cut
bang wigs as early as 3000 BC” and whether or not they were the
“influencers”, the look spread north to the Greece and Rome of Antiquity, Odele
Beauty noting Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (known also as Octavianus
(Octavian)); 63 BC-14 AD, founder of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) and first
Roman emperor 27 BC-14 AD) “wore his hair combed into a short, forehead-framing fringe,
setting a new trend (later dubbed the “Caesar cut”) that future emperors would
follow.”
Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc, 1901), oil on canvas by Albert Lynch (1860–1950). The short bangs were always present in older paintings of Joan of Arc but it wasn't unusual for modern artists to be influenced by contemporary trends. Monsieur Lynch left no notes so it's not known if he had in mind the circa 1901 style what of what later would come to be known as a “bloshie young woman”. Joan of Arc (circa 1412–1431) sometimes was depicted bangs blunt and not but artists had her variously blonde or brunette and with hair wild or coiffed and their images may reflect what male artists thought such a woman should look like. Surviving European art from
the Medieval to Modernity confirms bangs seem
never to have gone away and the emergence of the word late in the 1800s
suggests they must then have been a quite a thing. By then, bangs had survived seventeenth
century disapprobation of the church, priests finding fashion trends symbols of
ungodly vanity and inappropriate for modest, pious women. However what cemented bangs in their cultural
place seems to have been the social ripples from World War I (1914-1918), the
so called flappers of the “roaring twenties” taking to them as an adjunct to
the other forms of fashion minimalism they adopted as earlier, restrictive conventions were shrugged-off. Although
it had earlier also enjoyed some less pleasing connotations, “flapper” in the
sense of the “bright young things” of the era is thought a re-adaptation of the
nineteenth century Northern English slang meaning “teen-age girl” and it
referenced the hair not routinely being “put-up” in the adult manner and
instead kept in plaits or braids, left to “flap about” as she moved. The 1920s re-cycling of “flapper” retained
the connection with “lively young girl” and had nothing to do with hair; bangs
had been around for millennia before the flappers but they made them one of their
signature looks. Since the 1920s, trends have ebbed and flowed in the cyclical way fashion works and bangs variously
have been softened, blunted, gained wispy curls (not to be confused with the
dreaded “fly-away bits”), bulked up as “bumper bangs”, trimmed back to be the “baby
bangs” of pixie cuts and evolved in the twin streams of the “curtain bangs”
which seductively would drape over the eyes and the dramatic, “set piece
installations” made famous by Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009) which for years
provided hairdressers with a solid income stream as young ladies everywhere
demanded the same thing.
Although it’s
not uncommon to see headlines like “Bangs are back”, that’s misleading because
they never went away; like hairdressers, headline writers have their own
methods of operation. It would be more
accurate were the sites to headline which bangs are trending and that’s now a
global thing because it matters not whether a trend is noted as happening in
Seoul, Sydney, Seattle and Santiago because on the internet everything is
happening at the same time and looks now wax, wane or die in global unison and
while the imaginative can doubtless describe some variants, beyond than the basic, self-explanatory forms (short, straight, blunt), there are really five
distinct bangs:
Air bangs (seen here in
conjunction with long side bangs also favored by
goths).
(1) Air
bangs are characterized by being light and sparse. First defined as an element of K-beauty (the
aesthetic of South Korea which encompasses hair, clothes, cosmetics music) etc these
are known also as “Korean bangs” but their alternative name (see-through bangs)
better describes the look. Despite the
name, they are not ideally suited to those with thin or wispy hair and like
just about every style, work best with thick locks which provide a better
contrast and more scope for styling. Professional stylists caution those at home crafting air bangs from a conventional fringe to do the process slowly because it's easy to over-estimate to much need to be cut (specialized tools are available). One advantage of air bangs compare with a straight cut is that in using unequal-length strands, that aspect of precision is avoided but the look does work best if there's a perception of consistency in the spacing.
Baby bangs: On Pinterest, this was described as a “statement cut” and on that the content provider didn't expand but one suggested statement might be: “admission of guilt”. Still, the bangs do mean attention is drawn to her lovely sanpaku eyes so there's that. (2) Baby
bangs are short, straight or blunt-edged bangs which are used usually in
coordination with the shorter flavours of bob, the reason for that being that
if paired with more voluminous cuts, the bangs tend to “get lost” or worse,
look like mistakes. Micro bangs are also
“bangs writ small” but differ in that the look is used with styles other than
bobs and is identified by being ; not usually considered
conventionally attractive, it appears more on catwalks and in photo-shoots than
on the street although some do (unwisely) pick up the look. Baby bangs really suit only a tiny sub-set of the population (most of whom are aged under 15) and should be thought the Pontiac Aztec (2001-2005) of hair-styles in that they're functional, offer good visibility and undeniably are distinctive but are ugly. All that can be said for both is that on the inside, looking out, one doesn't have to see them.
Lindsay Lohan with curtain bangs, done in the “twin-hemispheric” or “double polyspheric mode”. (3) Curtain
bangs are long bangs, parted in the centre (although there have been
asymmetric interpretations) and designed to resemble a two-drape curtain tied
at the side, partially to reveal the face.
The leading edges of the most artfully styled sit just at the point
where the eye color is visible and devoted fashionistas wear them with a
“curtain reveal top” in which the curve of the garment matches that of the
bangs, something which can be as hard to achieve as it sounds. With a change of as little as a half inch (12.5 mm), stylists can use curtain bangs to change the perception of the shape of a face, the most popular visual trick being elongation, making a “round” face appear something more sought (heart, diamond or inverted triangle). Combined with skilfully applied makeup, the transformation can be dramatic.
An emo selfie with classic emo bangs. The expression is emoesque but the vibrancy of the colors on clothes and bandana is untypical, emos tending more to goth-flavored looks with black and gray although
purple seems now less of an emo thing.
(4) Emo
bangs are less concerned with shape and symmetry, the important thing being
the sweep of hair from the forehead fully covering at least one eye and maybe
partially obscuring the other. Amateur
psychiatrists and other students of the emo (a distinct sub-set of humanity)
probably have their own thoughts on whether the emo’s goal is to limit what
they see of the world or to limit how much others see of them. Emos are however pragmatic and although their have the honor of an eponymous style, they're also sometimes seen with various bangs.
There seems little to suggest bangs are a reliable marker of TERFdom and those wishing to assert where they stand on
TERFness should probably don an
appropriate T-shirt.
(5) Not all
agree TERF bangs should be thought a distinct class but they are short,
straight, blunt-edged bangs seen usually with shorter cuts (not necessarily
bobs). The term is said to have
originated on the microblogging platform Tumblr (which vies with MySpace for as
the social media site to have suffered the greatest loss between its
high-valuation and most recent sale) when in 2014 a user posted the suggestion such
bangs seemingly were exclusive to TERFs (Trans
Exclusionary Radical Feminists). That obviously was impressionistic and it was
never clarified whether the suggestion was intended humorously but if not, it’s
an example of a gaboso (pronounced gah-boh-so). A gaboso (Generalized Association Based On Single Observation) (also as the verb gabosoed)
is the act of taking one identifiable feature of someone or something and using
it as the definitional reference for a group; it ties in with logical
fallacies. While it’s doubtful many
professional hairdressers have TERF bangs in the lexicon, it seems novel enough
to warrant a mention.
