Tooltip Categories: Idioms

comet may be directed by magnetism as well as being attracted to the Sun

An example of personification in historical writing about science,

"all these difficulties may be avoyded by supposing ye comet to be directed by ye Sun's magnetism as well as attracted, & consequently to have been attracted all ye time of its motion, as well in its recess from ye Sun as in its' [sic] access towards him, and thereby to have been as much retarded in his recess as accelerated in his access. & by this continuuall attraction to have been made to fetch a compass about the sun'.'

…the vis centrifuga over pow'ring the attraction & forcing the Comet there[,] notwithstanding the attraction, to begin to recede from ye Sun.""

Isaac Newton (letter of 1681) quoted in Eric G. Forbes (1975) Introduction, in The Gresham Lectures of John Flamsteed, London: Mansell Information Publishing Ltd.

Newton is famous for his theory of universal gravitation, but here he is also considering a prior notion that magnetic forces are responsible for the planetary orbits.

Read about alternative conceptions

Read about historical scientific conceptions

Historical examples of alternative conceptions

Newton's argument seems very similar to the common misconception that for a body to be in orbit there must be a centrifugal force counteracting the centripetal force – an error contrary to what we now call Newton's first law (i.e., of inertia) which requires an unbalanced force to maintain an accelerated (e.g., curved) path.

Read about conceptions of orbital motion

Newton refers to the Sun as 'him', and refers to the comet with 'his recess' and 'his access'.

Read about personification in science texts

Read about examples of personifying nature

Read about other examples of personification

To 'fetch a compass' is an idiom meaning to go round (the Sun) – presumably with was in common usage in Newton's time.

Read about communicating science through idioms

bacteria think they will never be found at the gumline

An example of anthropomorphism in public science discourse:

"There's a natural crevice between the gun and the teeth, and that's where the bacteria can sit, and they think 'Well, he'll never find me here'…

Night time your saliva flow stops, so if you have bacteria on the surfaces of your teeth and in-between, it means while you are sleeping, the bacteria and whatever you have eaten during the day have a little bit of a field day, and that's when they can be most prolific."

Dr Claire McCarthy (King's College London) was talking on an episode ('Can you be addicted to sugar?') of the BBC's 'Inside Health'

This is anthropomorphic because bacteria have no central nervous system and so do not think anything. While bacteria may have evolved to have behavioural traits which lead to them tending to be located in places that are less accessible, any suggestion that they deliberately choose good hiding places is a pseudo-explanation (something with the form of an explanation, but scientifically unsound). This is therefore only figurative language, which may nonetheless encourage people to carefully clean their gumline.

Read about anthropomorphism

Read examples of anthropomorphism in science

That bacteria have a field day while we sleep is to employ an English idiom (which may be unfamiliar to some second language users).

Read about communicating science through idioms

red blood cells endure a death of a thousand cuts

An example of an idiom in science writing:

"Circulating RBCs accumulate various traumatic lesions over time. They are thought to endure a kind of 'death by a thousand cuts'. Lacking a nucleus and translational machinery, RBCs start their 4-month journey through the circulation with all of the enzymes that they will ever have, and these stores gradually become depleted. RBCs may suffer mechanical damage due to shear forces in the circulation. Perhaps most importantly, RBCs constantly encounter reactive oxygen species, both in the circulation and generated internally, as approximately 3% of haemoglobin undergoes auto-oxidation daily."

Kaufman, Richard (2018) Red Blood Cell Life Span, Senescence, and Destruction, in Edward J. Benz, Nancy Berliner, & Fred J. Schiffman, Anemia. Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, and Management, Cambridge University Press, 19-22.

Read about communicating science through idioms

brief encounter of X chromosomes is the mother of all one-night stands

An example of an extended metaphor used in popular science writing:

"At this stage, each cell in the female embryo switches off one of its two X chromosomes randomly. This requires a fleeting but intense physical relationship between the pair of X chromosomes in an a cell. For just a couple of hours the two two X chromosomes are physically associated in a brief encounter that ends with one being inactivated. … This is the mother of all one-night stands. In those two hours, chromosomal decisions get made which are then maintained for the rest of life. … It's is still not entirely clear what happens during the hours of X chromosome intimacy in early development."

Nessa Carey (2015) Junk DNA. A journey through the dark matter of the genome. London: Icon Books Ltd.

Read about metaphor in science

Read about examples of science metaphors

The term 'mother of all one-night stands' requires two levels of interpretation. The metaphor with a one-off sexual relationship (a one-night stand) is enhanced by the reference 'mother of all' which by incorporating 'all' has become an idiom meaning an extreme case or example, rather than just its previous metaphoric meaning (as in "necessity is the mother of invention").

Read about communicating science through idioms

telomere lengths can fall over the cliff edge

An example of an idiom used in popular science writing:

"The telomerase complex is usually active in the germ cells, so that parents pass on long telomeres to their children. But in some of the families where there are mutations in the genes encoding the telomerase enzyme or the accessory RNA factor…each generation passes on shorter telomeres to its offspring. Because symptoms develop when the telomeres fall below a certain length, each successive generation is born nearer to the point where their telomere length falls over the cliff edge."

Nessa Carey (2015) Junk DNA. A journey through the dark matter of the genome. London: Icon Books Ltd.

Read about communicating science through idioms

myotonic dystrophy provides the grit in the genetic oyster

An example of an idiom used in popular science writing:

"The normal range of repeats in both the Fragile X and Freidreich's ataxia genes is found in all human populations, and has been retained through human evolution. If these regions were completely nonsensical we would expect them to have changed randomly over time, but they haven't. This suggests that the normal repeats have some function.

But the real grit in the genetic oyster comes from myotonic dystrophy… myotonic dystrophy expansion gets bigger as it passes down the generation."

Nessa Carey (2015) Junk DNA. A journey through the dark matter of the genome. London: Icon Books Ltd.

Read about communicating science through idioms

chief scientific adviser to the government is a sort of Babel fish job

An example of an idiom used in public science discourse:

"I think, deep down, the bit I love is that sort of Babel fish job, so being a translator in between the worlds of policy and the world of science. By getting them to aticulate their question very, very clearly,  I can help them find the bit of science that is actually going to help them do their job better."

Professor Dame Angela McLean (Dept. of Biology & All Souls College, University of Oxford), Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK government, was being interviewed on an episode of BBC Inside Science.

To refer to a role as being a babel fish job is to use a kind of metaphor which is unlikely to be obvious to anyone not already familiar with this as an idiom. The term is fairly recently adopted as an idiom, only appearing in Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show in 1978.

Read about communicating science through idioms

vaporising an earth-bound asteroid is a Hail Mary approach

An example of figures of speech used in public science discourse:

"…if you punch an earth-bound asteroid too hard, it will fragment into several smaller but still dangerously sized pieces, effectively turning a cannonball into a shotgun spray. For bigger asteroids or for smaller earth-bound asteroids discovered with little warning time something with more oomph may be required: a nuclear weapon. Park a nuke-armed spacecraft next to the asteroid, detonate, and one side of it [the asteroid] will become severely irradiated. That side will shatter and jettison debris into space, pushing the asteroid away from earth as if it were a rocket. If the asteroid was discovered too late to deflect it away from the earth, we may try to completely vaporise it, with ever more powerful nuclear detonation. A Hail Mary approach, that risks turning the cannonball into a now radioactive shotgun spray."

Dr. Robin George Andrews, journalist and author, was talking on an episode of BBC Inside Science.

The references to cannonballs and shot from guns can be seen as an extended metaphor. ('Punch' is also a metaphor here.)

Read about metaphor in science

Read about examples of science metaphors

The reference to the asteroid being like a rocket (as it is propelled by the emission of some of its own material) is a simile.

Read about similes in science

Read about examples of science similes

To describe vaporising the asteroid as a Hail Mary approach is to employ an idiom where the meaning is only obvious to someone who is aware of the idiomatic use of the term.

Read about communicating science through idioms

we have a climate on steroids

An example of an idiom used in public science discourse:

"All of the climate extremes and the societal extremes [in the historical and tree ring records] that we have studied have happened under a Jet Stream regime under natural climate variability, so before we started putting CO2 into the atmosphere in massive amounts – and so now you have a climate that's on steroids, climate change, anthropogenic climate change, that's upping the variability in the Jet Stream and so all of these extremes that have happened in the past will be enhanced towards the future as well."

Prof. Valerie Trouet of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, was talking on an episode ('Historic weather extremes revealed using tree-rings') of 'Science in Action'.

To describe the climate as being 'on steroids' can be considered a metaphor, but the tag is now used so widely it can be considered to be idiomatic.

Read about communicating science through idioms

catalysts enable nuclear chain reaction

An example of analogy in science:

"Thus we see that the nuclei of carbon and nitrogen in our circular reaction chain are forever being regenerated, and act only as catalysts, as chemists would say…we may therefore describe the whole process as the transformation of hydrogen into helium as induced by high temperatures and aided by the catalytic action of carbon and nitrogen.

…

Since all other possible reactions lead to results inconsistent with the astrophysical evidence, it should be definitely accepted that the carbon-nitrogen cycle represents the process mainly responsible for solar energy generation.

…

In view of the basic part played in this process by carbon, there is something to be said after all for the primitive view that the Sun's heat came from coal; only we now know that the 'coal', instead of being a real fuel, plays the role of the legendary phoenix."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

Here the notion of a catalyst as a substance that is involved in, but not used up in, a chemical reaction is extended (by analogy) to nuclear reactions for a nuclide that is involved in, but not used up in, a nuclear process.

Read about analogy in science

Read examples of scientific analogies

The passage describes a theoretical mechanism by which nuclear fusions (and so energy release) can take place within the Sun. It s now believed that this process takes place in heavier stars but that within our Sun a different mechanism is the primary means of fusion/energy release. Gamow's argument that all other feasible mechanisms were inconsistent with the evidence, and therefore the carbon-nitrogen cycle should be definitely accepted proved to be misjudged.

Strictly, scientific claims are seem as provisional in the sense that they are always open to being revisited in the light of new evidence or new ways of thinking about the evidence. Scientific observations usually rely on technical apparatus and so depend on instruments being well-calibrated and working according to the assumed theory. It is always possible to find alternative explanations for any data set (even if this sometimes stretches credibility). Rhetoric which refers to absolutely certain knowledge, or proof beyond doubt, is inconsistent with our understanding of the nature of science.

Read about claims of scientific certainty

The idea that the Sun was an enormous ball of burning coal was once taken seriously by scientists (before nuclear processes were known) but would now be considered an alternative conception.

Read about the nature of alternative conceptions

Read about some examples of science misconceptions

Read about historical scientific conceptions

Gamow reference to the 'coal' (actually carbon nuclides) playing the role of the Phoenix is not a normal metaphor as the reader would not make sense of it without knowing about the legend of the bird that would burst into flames, and then reappear resurrected from its own ashes. This may therefore be seen as using a form of idiom.

Read about communicating science through idioms

physicist cut through the Gordian knot of the planetary theory

The use of idiom in popular science writing:

"It was only in the fall of 1943 that the young German physicist C. Weizsäcker cut through the Gordian knot of the planetary theory. Using the new information collected by recent astrophysical research, he was able to show that all the old objections against the Kant-Laplace hypothesis can be easily removed, and that, proceeding along these lines, one can build a detailed theory of the origin of planets, explaining many important features of the planetary system that had not even been touched by any of the old theories."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

Most metaphors are designed to offer a comparison which a reader/listener will immediately be able to 'decode', to work out how the comparison is being used. (Whether metaphors are always successful in this sense is a moot point!)

Read about metaphor in science

Read about examples of science metaphors

Idioms are phrase that have become established in the language but may not be clear to uninitiated. To say that Weizsäcker "cut through the Gordian knot" of the planetary theory is to use a metaphor that relates to a specific cultural reference (Alexander the Great thinking outside the box by cutting through a knot rather than taking time to untie it) that will not be obvious to a reader who does not know the specific reference.

Read about communicating science through idioms

electrons dance around a cyclic transition state during electrocyclisation

An example of the use of metaphor (and an English idiom) in science journalism:

"Long-time readers of this column will know that I love a cycloaddition – I've probably run hundreds of them over my career as an organic chemist. There was even a two-hour period immediately before my PhD viva where I could credibly claim to understand the fiendishly complex Woodward-Hoffman rules that were used to rationalise their outcomes in the pencil-and-paper days before computational chemistry. However, I have far less experience with their rarer cousin, the electrocyclisation.
On the surface, these reactions are pretty simple: electrons dance around a cyclic transition state, resulting in a double bond lost and a single bond gained.
…
A great example of a recent total synthesis that hinges on a couple of well-chosen (but well-hidden) electrocyclisations is the route taken to the phomopsene diterpenes by Yong-Qiang Tu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Lanzhou University, China, and co-workers.

The route more-or-less begins with a Nazarov cyclisation/ring expansion cascade, an unbelievable disconnection that's about as obvious as a black cat in a coal cellar. "

Chris Nawra (2013) (+)-iso-Phomopsene (and friends), Chemistry World, October 2023, p.13. https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/-iso-phomopsene-and-friends/4018109.article

Read about metaphor in science

Read about examples of science metaphors