Bang

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

Bangers & Mash by the Daring Gourmet.  Not everyone garnishes their B&M with chopped parsley.

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.

Sanpaku

Sanpaku (pronounced san-pach-ew)

An eye in which the sclera (white of the eye) is visible on three sides of the iris rather than the usual two (left & right).

Pre 1700s: A borrowing from the Japanese 三白 (sanpaku) (three whites) or 三白眼 (sanpaku gan) (three-white eyes).  Sanpaku is a noun and sanpakuish is an adjective; the noun plural is sanpakus.

Sanpaku (三白) (three whites) & Sanpaku gan (三白眼) (three-white eyes) are Japanese terms from traditional Chinese & Japanese medicine and they describe the “condition” in which the white of the eye is visible either above or below the iris when looking straight ahead.  Although the word was popularized by Japanese educator and nutritionist Nyoichi “George” Ohsawa (1893–1966) when he published the book You Are All Sanpaku in 1965, the idea had existed in oriental medicine probably for centuries although it’s impossible accurately to determine its origin.  It was mentioned in the diaries of at least one nineteenth century US Navy physician but attracted no interest in the West until the release of Ohsawa san’s book.  In Western medicine the phenomenon is described as “lower scleral show” or “inferior scleral show”, terms which are merely descriptive because (1) it’s something thought within the range of normality, (2) is indicative of no other mental or physical states and thus (3) is generally not considered a medical condition requiring treatment and is attributed variously to (3a) normal variation in eyelid anatomy, (3b) transient facial expression or gaze direction, (3c) traumatic injury or (3d) age-related tissue changes.  There are orbital or eyelid conditions (the best known being a thyroid-related eye disease causing lid retraction) which can induce a sanpaku-like appearance but instances are vanishingly rare.  In short, the medicalization of sanpaku is thought a product of superstition so predictably, on social media, sanpaku eyes seem to have a cult following.

Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) displaying her Sanpaku inferior (sclera (white of the eye) visible below the iris), Met Gala, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, New York City, May 2025.  Lovely though her eyes are, it may be not many have long focused on them.

In You Are All Sanpaku, Ohsawa san described sanpaku as a condition which indicated physical and mental imbalances and discussed its significance in relation to diet and overall well-being.  Historically, sanpaku is believed to have entered oriental medicine from the Japanese practice of “face-reading” and those with eyes observed thus were considered ill-fated and destined for a life filled with misfortune, culminating often with an early demise.  It gained a following on social media by the usual means: celebrity association.  Diana, Princess of Wales, President John Kennedy & Marilyn Munroe, all of whom died young, were all sanpakus and as Ohsawa san warned in You Are All Sanpaku: the eyes indicate someone's fate, signifying imminent danger or an “early and tragic end.”

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997, far left), Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962, centre left), Billie Eilish (b 2001. centre right) and John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; POTUS 1961-1963, far right).  Three died young in tragic circumstances but Ms Eilish remains fit and well.

The original basis of “face reading” isn’t known but as a diagnostic tool it focused on the matter of “balance”, something important also to the physicians of Antiquity who identified the “four humors”: flegmat (phlegm), sanguin (blood), coleric (yellow bile) & melanc (black bile) which were the causative agents of the four personality types, the phlegmatic, the sanguine, the choleric & the melancholic.  In the East, signs of sanpaku meant a man’s whole system (physical, physiological and spiritual) was out of balance, something caused by sins committed against the order of the universe, accounting for his sickness, unhappiness or insanity.  Ohsawa san noted that in the West, such folk had come to be called “accident prone” and they were the ones who should take note of the warning from sanpaku, nature’s tap on the shoulder.  A practical author of self-help texts, Ohsawa san recommended sanpaku eyes should be treated with a macrobiotic diet, focusing on brown rice and soybeans, something on which he had real expertise as the founder of the macrobiotic diet.

By their sanpaku you shall know them: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945, left), crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013, centre) and cult-leader Charles Manson (1934-2017, right).

Interestingly, the beliefs about sanpaku are culturally variable although universally it’s held the condition determines one's fate.  In the Japanese tradition those consequences are ill fate and misfortune while the Chinese associate sanpaku with good luck and wealth and this divergence has interested cultural anthropologists who study the symbolism and mythologies of different societies.  The tradition divides the eyes into "yin sanpaku" and "yang sanpaku", the roots of this the ancient Chinese concept of yin & yang, representing the duality of opposing yet complementary forces in the universe.  Yin and Yang are fundamental concepts in Chinese philosophy and represent complementary and interconnected aspects of the universe. Yin is associated with qualities such as darkness, femininity, passivity, and coldness, while Yang is associated with light, masculinity, activity, and warmth. They’re seen as opposing forces that are in a constant state of dynamic balance and they exist within all phenomena, including human physiology, nature and society.  In this they differ from the (wholly un-related) concept in particle physics of matter and anti-matter.  Matter is the familiar stuff which is much of the physical universe (particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons) while anti-matter consists of particles with the same mass as their matter counterparts but carrying an opposite charges.  When matter and anti-matter particles come into contact, they can annihilate each other, releasing energy.  Ying and Yang, mutually dependent, live in peaceful co-existence.

The Mean Girls (2004) crew demonstrate the range:  Rachel McAdams (b 1978, far left) & Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, centre-left) are in the part of the population who are either not sanpakus or the effect is imperceptible.  Lacey Chabert (b 1982, centre-right) is in the group with a separation around 1 mm while Amanda Seyfried (b 1985, far right) displays up to 2 mm depending on her expression.

A quadrilateral meeting to discuss German war guilt reparations and allied debts accumulated during World War I (1914-1918): Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934; President of France 1913-1920, far left), Andrew Bonar Law (1858–1923; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1922-1923, centre-left), Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943, centre right) and Georges Theunis (1873–1966; Prime Minister of Belgium 1921-1925 & 1934-1935, far right), 10 Downing Street, London, December 1922.

Before it became a meme, this was an obscure photograph which until the twenty-first century had appeared only in some specialist history texts but as the internet achieved critical mass, memes became a thing and Mussolini’s sanpaku eyes were a gift for the meme-makers, most captions suggesting the Duce may have had a sudden premonition of his own unfortunate end although others offered: “I feel naked without a moustache”, “I think I have imposter syndrome”, “Oh God, I just pooped my pants”, “I know one of these men is a Freemason but I don't know which” and “I wonder if they can tell I've smoked some weed”.  However, although not noted as a mystic, he may have sensed another's impending death, “sitteth at the right hand”, Andrew Bonar Law then having only months to live.

A colorized image of the lovely Hedy Lamarr (stage name of Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, 1914-2000).  Bare shoulders and sanpaku eyes have an allure.

Once best known as a Hollywood film star, Ms Lamar’s twenty-first century fame comes from her contribution early in World War II (1939-1945) to an early version of “jamming-resistant” radar-guidance.  The idea came to her while playing an ad-hoc piano duet with a composer as they attempted a synchronized “note-hopping” piece, something used in avant-garde compositions but effected mechanically by recording four “player pianos” (instruments modified with electromechanical or pneumatic mechanisms that activated the keys by instruction from perforated paper or metallic rolls) fitted with matching rolls.  From this example, the pair came to understand radio frequencies also could be switched, the wartime utility being this would make signals less susceptible to being jammed.  Even then, “frequency hopping” was not a new idea but the implementation Ms Lamar suggested was sufficiently novel to be granted a patent although the technology didn’t then exist to minimize sufficiently the size of the components which could be used in torpedos or rockets so use of the concept didn’t become widespread until the 1960s.  The “spread spectrum” later became familiar in WiFi and secure networking.

Princess Beatrice, Mrs Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi (b 1988).  Until she appeared at a royal wedding in the fascinator she made famous (some humorless souls would have said infamous), she was most noted for her lovely sanpaku eyes.

In Japanese face reading, yang sanpaku eyes (white part visible above the iris) reveal a person's dark and sinister nature, the eyes indicating the unstable mental state suffered by individuals exhibiting uncontrollable aggression, such as psychopathic murderers or serial killers.  Yin Sanpaku Eyes (sclera visible below the iris) signify a different physical or mental imbalance, one caused by the abuse of drugs, alcohol, and sugar which disrupt the body's equilibrium.  Although discouraged by all in the profession except the odd, entrepreneurial cosmetic surgeon, treatment options are available to “correct” scleral show and the most effect treatment is aesthetic plastic surgery, specifically the procedure called blepharoplasty, which can correct the appearance of the eyes.  The construct of blepharoplasty was blepharo- +‎ -plasty.  Blepharo- was from the New Latin, from the Ancient Greek βλέφαρον (blépharon) (eyelid; a feature resembling an eyelid) and -plasty was from the Ancient Greek πλαστός (plastós) (molded, formed) which now has the special meaning in medicine meaning "repair, restoration or re-shaping of part of the body with a surgical procedure".

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, b 1989, US Representative (Democrat-New York) since 2019 and one of "the squad") displaying her Sanpaku superior (sclera visible above the iris).  Some other of her body parts are also well-documented.

Casual observation suggests sanpaku eyes are far from rare and there are said to be three classes: (1) those with at least a .25 mm (.0098 inch) space between the iris and the upper and lower eyelids, (2) those with a separation of 1 (.0394 inch) mm and (3) those with a gap of 2 mm (.0787 inch) or more.  The concition need not manifest as something symmetrical (in the vertical axis), the two elements being (1) Sanpaku inferior: white visible below the iris and (2) Sanpaku superior: white visible above the iris, the latter said often induced when a subject is frightened or physiologically stressed).  However although “estimates” have been published, neither the prevalence of the condition nor the distribution within the three (unofficial) groups have ever been the subject of a reputable epidemiological study; because “sanpaku eyes” is not a recognised medical or anthropometric category; funding would thus be hard to secure although, as a purely observational and statistical exercise, presumably not many ethics departments would much be troubled.  So, lacking a defined diagnostic entry, there is no standardised measurement threshold and estimates of prevalence are thus almost certainly speculative and thus unreliable.  Those with sanpaku eyes should not too much dwell on the numbers and instead flutter their eyelashes and enjoy the admiring glances.

Mean Girls four-way phone call: Eye-rolls (Amanda Seyfried, top right) don't count, a sanpaku defined only by separation maintained when looking ahead or to the side.

Humans are not the only species with a sclera but we are untypical in it being so visible.  That humans even have white scleras has interested linguistic anthropologists, evolutionary biologists and other researchers, some offering the Cooperative Eye Hypothesis which suggested the distinctive appearance evolved as a mechanism with non-verbal communication could be enhanced.  According to this conjecture, the high visibility of the iris & pupil against the white background allows an interlocutor more easily to track eye movements, helping individuals to understand where others are looking during interactions.  Observational studies revealed the way humans and other great apes move their heads and eyes in different ways, humans relying more on eye movements than head movements to see where someone else is looking.  Apes, without the white component in their eyes, tend more to move the whole head.  Not all support the "cooperative eye" faction but it’s an interesting approach to understanding the evolutionary significance of the human eye's appearance and the sophistication of communication is certainly a noted difference between humans and apes.

Seeing the whites of the eye: a gree-eyed cormorant taking lunch.

The phrase “don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes” comes of the military and was an instruction to infantry in the age of the musket to delay firing until the target was within close range, the rationale being (1) accuracy would be enhanced and (2) the projectile (musket ball) would strike with greater energy, thus increasing the effectiveness (measured in the casualty & death rates).  It’s often attributed to Colonel William Prescott (1726–1795) shouting it to his troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775) during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) but according to Phrase Finder, the origins lie at least 32 years earlier.  On 27 Jun, 1743, during the Battle of Dettingen (fought in Bavaria as one of the "footnote engagements" of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748)), the resourceful Scot Lieutenant-Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw (1867-1761) 5th Baronet) departed from military orthodoxy when, responding to a French cavalry charge, adopted a novel tactic he’d devised, keeping his men not in the conventional square formation to meet the charge head on but having the two centre companies divide from the centre, falling back from the outer markers, thereby compelling the French to gallop through a withering crossfire.  It was potentially a high-risk strategy but he’d trained his troops well the French cavalrymen obediently threaded the needle, suffering heavy losses.  Tacitly acknowledging the danger presented by his innovation, Sir Andrew’s succinct instruction to his brigade had been: “Dinna fire till ye can see the whites of their e' en . . . if ye dinna kill them they'll kill you.”

If the human eye lacked a white sclera it would mean the “messaging” in facial expressions (a non-verbal clue in communication) would have evolved a little differently; Paris Hilton (b 1981) illustrates (digitally altered image).  Ms Hilton has brown eyes but often wears blue contact lens.

As far as is known, all living creatures on Earth came ultimately from a single event which can be said to be the origin of life because at this time, there is no evidence of other living things anywhere in the universe.  Everything else is speculative; life may have started (or arrived) here many other times but for whatever reason not thrived and around the universe there may be many forms of life; some may be more advanced than us or we may be unique in our scientific and technological mastery.  The single point of origin is why we share elements of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid, the so-called “building-blocks of life”) with our cats, dogs, goldfish and bananas so, unsurprisingly, in living creatures, eyes are common, often in pairs but unlike those in humans, not all are out-growths of a brain although, in many of the lineages of the Metazoa they are neurally derived and remain tightly integrated with the central nervous system.

A nice pair of boobies.  Charmingly, blue-footed boobies are known to be monogamous, pairs often staying together for life.  Like us, birds are two eyed vertebrates although except for the old outlier (like owls) their eyes, for good reasons, shifted to the sides.  Note how the booby’s eye differs from that of a human.

As a general principle it all depended on the developmental origin and phylogeny (the evolutionary history of groups of organisms).  In vertebrates (mammals, birds, fish etc), the eye evolved as an evagination (a growth outward) of the forebrain during embryogenesis (the process by which an embryo is formed and develops).  Cephalopods (octopus, squid etc) differ in that while the optic lobes of the brain are large and closely connected, the eye is not literally a brain protrusion; thus, while neurally integrated, the eyes are not brain outgrowths.  Arthropods (insects, crustaceans and such) have compound eyes formed from ectodermal (of the The outermost of the three tissue layers in the embryo of a metazoan animal) tissues which connect to the brain via optic nerves and are thus also neurally connected but not developmental extensions of the brain itself.  Many cnidarians (such as the box jellyfish) possess complex lens eyes but lack a centralized brain, their eyes peripheral sensory structures connecting to nerve rings rather than a true brain.  Many invertebrates have relatively simple photoreceptors which can be thought of as “eyespots” which can be distributed across body tissues, the best contemporary comparison probably the sensors now so ubiquitous in electronic devices.

Boobies, one step at a time.

A booby is a seabird in the genus Sula, part of the Sulidae family.  Boobies are closely related to the gannets (Morus), which were formerly included in Sula, the genus created in 1760 by the French naturalist Mathurin Jacques Brisson (1723-1806).  The name was derived from súla, the Old Norse and Icelandic word for the other member of the family Sulidae, the gannet.  The English name booby was based on the Spanish bobo (stupid) as the tame birds often landed on board sailing ships, where they were easily captured and eaten.  As well as a popular addition to the diet of sailors for whom meat other than fish was a rarity, it was fortuitous for many, the Admiralty's archives revealing boobies often mentioned as having been caught and eaten by shipwrecked sailors.

Mr Andrew Mountbatten Windsor in police car, under arrest, February, 2026.

If humans had eyes free of a white sclera (like the booby and many birds), our appearance would be quite different, illustrated by a digitally edited image of a green-eyed (former prince/duke/admiral etc) Andrew-Mountbatten Windsor (b 1960), rendered as a line drawing by Vovsoft.  However, the use of that image to demonstrate the point may not have been the best choice because, in the original, his expression didn’t appear greatly different.

As well as charming eyes, boobies also have interesting feet.  The distinctive blue feet (the result of pigments ingested from their diet of fish) also play a part in the bobby’s mating ritual although not exactly in the podophilic sense familiar in a sub-set of humans.  In the spring mating season, the bird’s feet become a bright turquoise blue and, to demonstrate their health and vitality, conspicuously they will display them to potential partners.  The job done, as their eggs hatch, the blue hue fades to something less vivid.  One aspect of their behaviour which amused the ornithologists who first observed it was that if among fishers unloading their catch, it tossed a small fish from the by-catch, a booby will take it and waddle off somewhere to enjoy it in solitude rather than gulping it down as in common in many species.  Like penguins, although ungainly on land, they are skilled plunge divers which used their streamlined bodies and air sacs “fly” through the water, catching their prey at high speed and they hunt in "packs", coordinating their movement to maximize the catch.  Boobies have been recorded diving from as high as 90 m (300 feet), their speed upon entry estimated at around 100 km/h (60 mph).