In language, 'left' is 'bad' while 'right' is 'good'

It's really curious how consistent this is. As Will mentioned, our word "sinister" comes from the Latin for "left". Our word "gauche" comes from the French for "left". On the other "hand" (sorry), we have "dexterous", which comes from the Latin for "right(-handed)". And "adroit", which comes from the French for "right".

Linguistically, "ambidextrous" means "both right hands" - as unwieldy as that sounds. And someone clumsy has "two left feet". Even the word "left" comes from Old English, "lyft", meaning "weak".

The only positive use of "left" I know of is that "aristocrat" has the Greek word for "left" in its root, but then Greece was the birthplace of democracy - they may not have meant "aristocrat" to be complimentary, either.

There are a lot of proposals to explain why this is, but none of them are all that convincing. For example, the language centers are in the left hemisphere of the brain, and the left hemisphere is more directly connected to the right side of the body (the left brain controls the right hand, foot, eye, and so on (but the left ear, though). So one theory suggests that the language center naturally prefers "right handed" words. Another suggests that while the handshake (using the right hand) originated as a way to demonstrate the lack of a weapon, a left-handed opponent was less trustworthy because he could still wield his weapon while shaking hands.

Like I said, not so terribly convincing.

But there is a lot of mounting evidence that things are really just somehow different for lefties. There've been other studies in the past that indicate that mental asylums have three to six times the fraction of lefties compared to the general population. Lefties have a higher incidence of accidents, divorce, depression, suicide, and language disorders. Without any good explanation why.

There's some evidence that the origin or handedness may be civilization itself. Primitive cultures (Punjabi, Fijians, and so on) tend to have a higher percentage of lefties, suggesting that as civilization grows (and thus standardizes tools, rituals, writing, and so on), left-handedness decreases. Hunter-gatherers use both hands, but farm tools (like scythes) have to pick a hand.

There's some intrinsic "handedness" in nature, too. In human biology, the left lung is smaller, making room for the heart. Fiddler crabs have one claw much larger than the other, and flatfish have both eyes on the same side of their heads.

In chemistry, some molecules are "chiral", meaning they're not equivalent to their mirror image, exhibiting "handedness". Left-handed sugars, for instance, tastes just as sweet as right-handed sugars, but the body doesn't metabolize them.

In physics, most interactions are left-right symmetric, but the weak force only acts on left-handed particles (and only on right-handed antiparticles).

It's a fascinating world. :)

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