Waves that laugh: a publication and one question on the cultural history of waves

[Giordano Lipari]

Dear fellow scholars, practitioners and appreciators of waves and shores,

For quite an unlikely combination of causes and effects, I happened to co-author a study at the crossroads of nearshore wave dynamics and ancient Greek. 

Looking at that literature with a physical eye, we could determine that in ancient Greek the breakers were said to be laughing out. That is, when an ancient Greek said 'the waves laugh out', they precisely meant 'the waves break'. This plausibly happened as a matter of ordinary language, and not in a flight of poetry as earlier scholars uninitiated in fluid dynamics had assumed. A nice implication of this imagery is that for the ancient Greeks the shore had to be the sea's mouth where waves laughed out in breakers.

Conversely, this study allowed us to recognise several passages in the ancient Greek literature invoking nearshore waves. For example, we found out that the earliest records of a reasoning on the wind-wave generation, transformation of seas into swell and eventual onshore dissipation by breaking are from the third century BCE. Place those thoughts in Athens, at the Lyceum, the school founded by Aristotle. Aristotle himself was not exceedingly passionate about water, and those speculations were plausibly developed under the second school director, Theophrastus. Anyhow, these texts appear to mark the beginning of water wave dynamics as a science, at least in Europe.

If you want to read a little more than this mail, https://link.growkudos.com/1f7i1bvjim8 is a plain-language summary of our study. For the steadfast readers, that summary points to the full essay published in a renowned journal in Classics. A word of warning: the latter is a long read with quotes in ancient Greek, untranslated modern languages and no formulas. (Being unable to support one's own reasoning with any maths was a challenge of discomfort to the engineer!)

The question for you. In sum, the laughing waves and the shore as the sea's laughing mouth were a deeply rooted usage that disappeared with time. Does your culture and language have examples of wave motions being associated with human laughter? Thanks in advance for letting me/us know!

Kindly, Giordano Lipari
http://www.watermotion.eu