High and Low
A hand gesture between two people, often expressing solidarity.
What is a High Five?
A term used for the flat, final stretch of a horse-racing stretch, or, a way to describe you will do something hastily.
What is straightaway?
Throughout Dante's Inferno he is guided by this ancient Roman poet, who composed the Aeneid.
Who is Vergil?
The term for a humanlike creature believed to be made through the processes of alchemy.
What is a homunculus?
Black holes are formed when massive stars do this.
What is collapse?
If something is long overdue, you may say "It's blank this happened".
What is high time?
From Latin for "before", a term meaning the opening bet in a game of American poker.
What is Ante?
Although Dante's Inferno is likely more well-known individually, it is the first part of this epic poem, although it rarely has time for laughs.
What is the Divine Comedy?
This snake eating its own tail has been adopted as a popular symbol in alchemical text.
What is the Ouroborous?
Black holes often absorb these - the term for the fundamental particles of light, and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation.
What are photons?
An often cowboy affiliated term for a suggested dueling period, that made a heavy resurgence recently as part of an ultimate line by Overwatch character McCree.
What is High Noon?
If you've ever heard the ohrase "pass the buck", you may know it refers to the passing of turn to turn from players around a gambling table. However, the buck was originally a physical item, with its Old Emglish term being "seax".
What is a knife?
Although most circles are based off biblical sins, Dante, being a Christian, had this anti-Church staple included as the sixth circle of Hell, coming from the Christian writers terms for unorthodox sects.
What is Heresy?
In alchemical theory, this galactic element is referred to as the "First Matter" through which all other metals are transmuted, acting as a symbolic bridge between the soul and the body.
What is Mercury?
The term for the boundary of no escape in a black hole, or a 1997 film starring Laurence Fishburne.
What is Event Horizon?
An idiom meaning "look and see", originating from the abbreviation of look in Middle English.
What is "lo and behold".
Tinhorn is an 1800s term to describe someone who was flashy but of ultimately no use, deriving from gamblers who used to shake their dice in these household objects.
What are tin cans?
Although Cicero, whose works Dante takes great inspiration from, divided sins into two categories of fraud and violence, Dante identified a third - although nowadays, we may be likely to use this term for a loss of bladder control.
What is incontinence?
This big cat represents a specific stage in the process of alchemical transmutation, signifying the release of both the primordial essence and instincts.
What is the Lion?
The name, without the numbers, of the first black hole ever discovered, which is also a Swan constellation found in the Milky Way.
What is Cygnus (X-1)?
Often used in the bible, this is the term for someone who works for wages but lacks genuine care or concern for the work or those they serve. Nowadays, its generally used for people who undertake menial work.
This infamous poker hand contains any two eights and two aces, taking its grim name on from Jack McCall's 1976 assassination of Wild Bill Hitchcock.
What is a Dead Man's Hand?
In Inferno's circles of Hell, punishments are enacted as contrapassos - to provide an example, in the fourth circle, sorcerers, astrologers, and false prophets have their heads turned back on their bodies such that it is "necessary to walk backward because they could not see ahead of them." What does a contrapasso mean?
What is "to suffer the opposite".
This alchemical element of the carbon family, although not used in the transmutation of gold, was believed to have its utilizations in the preservation of food. In modern applications, its known for its capabilities to form alloys and resistence to corrosion.
What is Tin?
The name of the theorem that postulates that once a black hole achieves a stable condition after formation, it has only three independent physical properties: mass, electric charge, and angular momentum. One could propose a similar theorem about a Sphynx Cat.
What is the no-hair theorem?