where did the word RAINBOW originate?
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Beth is correct about what dictionary.com says.  But the entry does not say anything about how that Old English word came about.  But if you look the word up in the Oxford English Dicionary, the very first example given is a citation of Genesis 9:13 from the year 1000.\n\nThat is, the earliest attested use in English is indeed the Biblical use.\n\nWhy a BOW? In the story of Genesis 9, God is speaking immediately after Noah's Flood and promising that he will never send another flood to destroy the whole earth.  He announces the rainbow as a sign of this solemn promise ("covenant"):\n\nGen 9:12-16  And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: \nI have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." \n\nThe image is simply this -- God has been 'waging war'** against rebellious humanity.  The bow is an image of making war.  But now God says he will set aside his bow, and not use it (and he'll put it where all can see --including HIM-- that he has set it aside!\n\n**The Bible speaks in several places of God's "arrows". These can be various sorts of judgments: famine, calamity, pestilence, illness (Deteronomy 32:23-24, Ezekiel 5:16, Psalm 38:2-3). In some cases 'arrows' stands for lightning bolts (Psalms 18:14, 144:6)\n\n(There are other examples of "signs" of covenants and treaties in the Bible and the surrounding countries of the Ancient Near East.   These signs function as a VISIBLE reminder to the parties of the promise they have made and/or of some curse or judgment they wish on whoever breaks their covenant promise.  In fact, the idea of "signs of the covenant" comes over into Christianity in the "Lord's Supper" [or 'Eucharist] where the bread and wine are presented as the body and blood of Christ, signs of the "new covenant" Jesus made.)
222325
The rainbow is a prism that occurs when light travels through water or something that can bend the light to creat the colors that we call the rainbow.
211007
Well it got it's name from the goddess Iris (I don't know what culture) she was the goddess of the rainbow. Irises come in every color. They can grow up to 6 feet tall. They are a bulbous plant also. Oh and they are the state flower of Tennesse.
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1. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Actually, the rainbow is a whole continuum of colors from red to violet and even beyond the colors that the eye can see.\n2. you can see a rainbow anywhere there is water around and you have the sun to your back.\n3.Sir Isaac Newton in his early physics experiments decided the colors of the rainbow
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hi, try this link .. its a nice one ..\n\nhttp://eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/
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The rainbow effect can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind the observer at a low altitude or angle. The most spectacular rainbow displays when half of the sky is still dark with draining clouds and the observer is at a spot with clear sky overhead. The rainbow effect is also commonly seen near waterfalls or fountains. Rainbow fringes can sometimes be seen at the edges of backlit clouds and as vertical bands in distant rain or virga. The effect can also be artificially created by dispersing water droplets into the air during a sunny day.\nIn a very few cases, a moonbow, or night-time rainbow, can be seen on strongly moonlit nights. As human visual perception for colour in low light is poor, moonbows are perceived to be white.\nThe rainbow's appearance is caused by dispersion of sunlight as it is refracted by (approximately spherical) raindrops. The light is first refracted as it enters the surface of the raindrop, reflected off the back of the drop, and again refracted as it leaves the drop. The overall effect is that the incoming light is reflected back over a wide range of angles, with the most intense light at an angle of about 40°–42°, regardless of the size of the drop. Since the water of the raindrops is dispersive, the amount that the sunlight is bent depends upon the wavelength, and hence colour, of the light's constituent parts. Blue light is refracted at a greater angle than red light, but because the area of the back of the droplet has a focal point inside the droplet, the spectrum crosses itself, and therefore the red light appears higher in the sky, and forms the outer colour of the rainbow. Contrary to popular belief, the light at the back of the raindrop does not undergo total internal reflection; however, light that emerges from the back of the raindrop does not create a rainbow between the observer and the Sun. The spectra emitted from the back of the raindrop do not have a maximum of intensity, as the other visible rainbows do, and thus the colours blend together and do not form a rainbow.\n rainbow does not actually exist at a location in the sky, but rather is an optical phenomenon whose apparent position depends on the observer's location. All raindrops refract and reflect the sunlight in the same way, but only the light from some raindrops reaches the observer's eye. These raindrops are perceived to constitute the rainbow by that observer. The position of a rainbow in the sky is always in the opposite direction of the Sun with respect to the observer, and the interior is always slightly brighter than the exterior. The bow is centred on the shadow of the observer's head, or more exactly at the antisolar point (which is below the horizon during the daytime), appearing at an angle of approximately 40°–42° to the line between the observer's head and its shadow. As a result, if the Sun is higher than 42°, then the rainbow is below the horizon and cannot be seen unless the observer is at the top of a mountain or a similar vantage point. Similarly, it is difficult to photograph the complete arc of a rainbow, which would require an angle of view of 84°. For a 35 mm camera, a lens with a focal length of 19 mm or less would be required, whilst most photographers are only likely to have a 28 mm wide-angle lens.\nFrom an aeroplane, one has the opportunity to see the whole circle of the rainbow, with the plane's shadow in the centre. This phenomenon can be confused with the glory, but a glory is usually much smaller, covering only 5°–20°, as opposed to over 80° for a full circle rainbow.
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The curvature of the rainbow is a consequence of having only those raindrops that are at the vertices of 42 degree angles between you and the sun. The collection of all these raindrops is of course an arc. \n\nThe light enters the raindrop from behind you, and bounces off its back surface. The colors separate, because each color has a different speed in the water, and therefore refract a different amount.
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Gay\nMuch commentary about this adjective referring to homosexuals exists, mostly having to do with usage. Our concern here, however, is etymology and two mistaken notions prevail. The first is that gay, meaning homosexual, originated as an acronym for Good As You. The second is that it is of relatively recent origin, dating only to the late 1960s. Both of these ideas are in error.\n\nMany, believe that gay came to mean homosexual only in the late 1960s with the Stonewall riot and the rise of the gay rights movement. This is not the case. The error these people are making is confusing the adoption of the term by the heterosexual community, and thus the English language as a whole, with its origin. The term is in fact much older, being used by homosexuals to refer to themselves with certainty as early as the 1920s, and possibly as early as the 1860s.\n\nLighter gives the earliest usage cite as a 1922 quote from Gertrude Stein's "Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene" which appeared in Vanity Fair. It is uncertain, however, if Stein's use of gay in this case is a reference to lesbianism or to the [then] conventional sense of gay meaning happy:\n\nThey were ... gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, ... they were quite regularly gay.\nThe first unequivocal written use of gay to mean homosexual is in 1929, in Noel Coward's musical Bittersweet. In the song Green Carnation, four overdressed, 1890s dandies sing:\n\nPretty boys, witty boys, You may sneer\nAt our disintegration.\nHaughty boys, naughty boys,\nDear, dear, dear!\nSwooning with affectation...\nAnd as we are the reason\nFor the "Nineties" being gay,\nWe all wear a green carnation.\n\nThe penultimate line refers to the 1890s, which were commonly called the gay nineties. In general usage, this appellation had nothing to do with homosexuality, but in this context, Coward clearly uses it as a double entendre. \n\nGay appears again in 1933 in Ford and Tyler's Young & Evil. In 1938 in the movie Bringing Up Baby, the character played by Cary Grant, when asked why he is wearing women's clothing replies, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden." In retrospect, this is obviously a joke intended to slip past the censors. In their 1941 book Sexual Variations, Gershon Legman and G.V. Henry cite gay as a slang term for homosexual, which indicates that it was in use for some time prior.\n\nLighter also indirectly cites an 1868 song by female impersonator Will S. Hays titled, Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store. The lyrics do not explicitly link the word with homosexuality, but they can be interpreted that way, especially if sung by a man in drag. Then again, that may be reading too much into the lyrics. You be the judge:\n\nIt's about a chap, perhaps you know,\nI'm told he is 'Nobody's beau,'\nBut maybe you all knew that before,\nHe's a lively clerk in a Dry-Goods Store.\nO! Augustus Dolphus is his name,\nFrom Skiddy-ma-dink they say he came,\nHe's a handsome man and he's proud and poor,\nThis gay young clerk in the Dry-Goods Store.\nOK, so gay was definitely in use in the 1920s, and perhaps earlier, but how did the term come to be associated with homosexuals? Several possibilities exist, but the acronym for Good As You is not one of them. \nThe most likely explanation is that it derives from gaycat or geycat, a slang term for a tramp or hobo who is new to the road. Gaycats were commonly in the company of older tramps, implying a homosexual relationship. The term, according to Lighter, dates to at least the 1890s. Gaycats were employed as lookouts while other hoboes committed crimes. The OED2 cites the 1935 Underworld & Prison Slang by N. Ersine as defining geycat as a homosexual boy. The origin of gaycat is unknown. Green, however, says a gay cat was a tramp who offered sexual services to women.\n\nAnother possible origin is the late nineteenth century slang usage of gay to mean promiscuous. A
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There are a number of possible references.\n\nThe term refers to an internet site about the community of Hope, British Columbia.  It is the title of a song by Bob Marley.  It is the name of a popular tourism destination in northern Ontario. Adventures in Rainbow Country was the name of the TV series the previous poster mentioned.  It is the name of a B&B in Escalante, Utah.\n\nI hope on of these links gives you the information you are looking for.
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Rainbows are caused by sunlight reflecting off and refracting through raindrops. There is a very specific angle that each different wavelength of light will take so all parts of the rainbow of that color are always seen at exactly that angle away from the Sun, about 42 degrees for visible light. In math, the collection of all points at a certain distance from a point is a circle, so rainbows are seen as a circle around the sun.
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Well, rainbows (which are a spectrum) have been known for ages and ages. That crystals will produce rainbows has also been known for ages. Newton was the first person to seriously investigate the properties of light using prisms. The discovery of spectral *lines* was later, but I'm not sure by whom. But it was mostly done by the late 1800's. As a point of interest, Helium was first discovered through the spectrum of sunlight and only later found on earth.
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If you're asking when the word "gay" came to be associated with homosexuals, particularly males, it emerged from Britain in the late 19th century as a sort of "codeword" for being able to identify each other.\n\nThose were in the days when we didn't have a strong identity in the culture and wouldn't say that "fruit" is a bigoted word to use in connection with homosexual people.
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No never heard of it.....but i will google it now.....i'm desperate.....\nthis is what i found....\n\nhttp://www.rainbowinvestigations.com/story.cfm?rainbowID=227
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rainbow\n\n\n...c'mon
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Yes it is rainbow. Here is the Russian spelling of it: "радуга"
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You know how you see a rainbow when its really humid, or when it rains and there is sun? Thats what you saw, you saw a rainbow, but not a half rainbow, but rather a whole rainbow around the sun. A ring rainbow, this is due because of the high humidity that is in the air, its the same as a rainbow, just around the sun.
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A rainbow is seen when the Sun is behind you and water is in the air in front of you. You can make one with a water hose or maybe see one in the air with rain in the area. Natural rainbows appear very large and several miles away. The top is all you can see because the ground in front of you blocks the lower portion of the rainbow. However, when seen from an airplane, rainbows are complete circles.