CHAPTER XX

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN THE NAMES OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

1. GENERAL REMARKS

In the various names of weights and measures there are many general-utility words which offer no difficulty in the sphere of those who use them habitually, yet which are sometimes puzzling to others, while they are interesting to the student of semantics. They form a chapter in the history of weights and measures, itself a volume in the history of the human mind.

Some terms have an obvious meaning, as ‘half’ and ‘quarter.’

These inevitably run through the usual series of measures. Even the metric system has to tolerate half-units as a concession to unscientific weakness while refusing quarters otherwise than as 25 hundredths of the unit. But quarters are firmly rooted in the human mind and resist scientific attempt to extirpate them. They are very common in the sexdecimal series, representing a fourth of one unit and four of a lower unit.

Quart and Quartern have acquired certain definite senses, the first of a quarter-gallon, the second either of a quarter-pint or of a quarter-peck. Quarter by itself is of wide application; it may mean the fourth of a pound or of a hundredweight or of a dollar, or of an acre. In its Teutonic form we have it in farthing and in firkin. France has its _quart_ as a quarter-pound, its _quartié_ in land-measure, its _quarteron_ as a quarter-hundred, though usually 26.

The context, whether in writing or in speech, usually shows the meaning of ‘quarter’ unless that meaning has been destroyed by legislation, as in the case of the Quarter of wheat where the meaning of the word could not be recognised either by the eminent scientific member of a Parliamentary Committee or by the scientific expert in measures giving evidence before him. The Quarter has remained, while the Chaldron, of which it was a fourth, was so worried by legislative interference that it disappeared as a corn-measure.

The French Setier in its different senses of a load of corn, of a bushel, of a double gallon, and of a pint, had long lost all connection with L. _sextuarius_; it had indeed got to mean a quarter in the same way that in Italy the _sestiero_, originally one of the six districts of a city, had acquired a similar sense to the French _quartier_ as a district. The French setier or sestié had so lost its original meaning as to be often written ‘septier,’ as if it were a seventh.

The Greek obolos (originally meaning a copper nail), 1/6 of a drachm, acquired in Latin the sense of ‘half.’ When the drachma took the weight-sense of 60 grains, an obolus was 10 grains; but this was half a scruple, so it took a general sense of ‘half,’ and the halfpenny was latinised as an obolus.

Maille was the corresponding French word for halfpenny, being It. _medaglio_, Prov. _medaio_, akin not only to ‘medal’ but also to ‘metal,’ in which there seems to be a sense of ‘half’ of an alloy. Yet it became a weight of 1/4 ounce, perhaps from being half of the loth or half-ounce. And the Fr. _felin_, It. _ferlino_, probably corruptions of vierling or farthing, on becoming 1/4 of the _maille_, was 1/16 of the ounce. In the section on terms used in old land-measures I have shown the equivocal sense of words related to ‘ferling.’

Our Yard, from the influence of its French equivalents—_verge_, rod, and _vergée_, rood—became a quarter-acre, and then a quarter-hide.

The Drachm as a part of the Troy ounce, 1/8, became the dram as a part of the averdepois ounce, 1/16. As a measure it became 1/8 of a spirit pint.

The terms signifying 1/12, 1/16, 1/24 and some smaller fractions of weights or measures, show a development of meaning which will be given in the following sections.

2. THE NAIL AND THE CLOVE; THE INCH AND THE OUNCE

The yard is lawfully divided (as was also the ell) into 4 quarters and 16 nails.

The hundredweight is divided into 4 quarters, 8 stones and 16 cloves or nails.

How did ‘Nail’ come to mean a sixteenth of a unit, length or weight?

The ‘New English Dictionary’ throws no light on the origin of this peculiarly English term. The only other general name I know for a sixteenth is the Indian ‘anna,’ the sixteenth of a rupee, of a crop, of a venture, &c.

The story of the Nail reaches back to the early history of weights and measures and is of philological as well as metrological interest. The half-cubit or span, the common handy measure in most parts of the world, is of 12 digits, while the foot is 16 digits and is still so divided in Italy and other southern countries. The digit is not only a middle-finger breadth, it is also a thumb-nail breadth; as the former it was in Greek _dactylos_, as the latter _onyx_, which became _onkia_ in Southern Italy and gave rise to two Latin words, _unguis_ for the actual finger-nail, _uncia_ for the thumb-nail breadth equal to the digit and generally for a twelfth part. Hence a differentiation of meaning in the Romance languages.

GREEK _onyx_, _onkia_

Latin _unguis_ _uncia_, thumb-nail breadth, ounce Italian _unghia_ _oncia_, last thumb-joint, ounce Provençal _ounglo_ _ounço_, finger-joint, knuckle, ounce French _ongle_ _once_, finger-joint (obs.), ounce English (nail) _unce_, ynch

When the Romans adopted the duodecimal or ‘uncial’ system they applied it to the foot, which was divided into either 12 or 16 parts both called unciæ; but to distinguish these they used two other words, _digitus_ for the sixteenth and _pollex_, thumb, for the twelfth, the thumb-breadth.

In English ‘unce, ynch’ always meant the thumb-breadth 1/12 of a foot, ‘Nail,’ the thumb-nail breadth equal to the digit, being kept for the 1/16 foot. Thence ‘nail’ came to have the general sense of sixteenth and to be applied to that fraction of a 4-span yard, of a 5-span ell, of a bushel, of a hundredweight.

In Latin the analogous general sense of twelfth belonged to _uncia_, whether of the foot, of the land-unit, of the pound. The general sense of twenty-fourth attached to the scruple as 1/24 ounce, passed to the qirát, or carat, in the countries influenced by Arab customs, as being 1/24 of the mithkal, the Arab successor of the Roman solidus.

In modern Italy the palmo or span, and the libbra or pound, were both divided into 12 _oncie_, meaning inches or ounces.

With the general substitution of the 16-ounce pound for that of 12 ounces, the word ‘ounce’ lost its meaning of twelfth. In some of the Romance languages its sense of length extended to the length of any finger-joint, especially to the length of the proximal joint of the thumb. Thus in Southern France the _ounço dóu pouce_ (Fr. _once de poulce_) was taken as 1/5 of the span or nearly 2 inches.

When our Cwt. was raised to 112 lb. and the 16-lb. stone replaced by that of 14 lb. the term Nail was applied to the half of the new stone, and it was perhaps the divisibility of the new Cwt. into 16 parts of 7 lb. that reconciled people to the unpopular new weight. But for all that, the people held on for centuries to the 16-lb. stone, and call its half, 8 lb., a nail, though it is no longer the sixteenth of a larger unit.

When the half of the 14-lb. stone was legally called a nail, how was this term to be rendered into law-Latin or statute French by the scribes of Plantagenet times ignorant of the origin of the term? Naturally they blundered; they got hold of the wrong nail, rendering it by L. _clavus_ instead of by _unguis_, and by Fr. _clou_, _cloue_, or in the script of the time _clove_ instead of by _ongle_. This misnomer took; and a statute of 1430 states that a Wey of cheese may contain 32 cloves, every clove 7 lb., making the wey = 224 lb., 2 Cwt. But despite statutes the cheese-trade went on with its 8-lb. clove, of which 32 make 256 lb., the true wey.

It was the same with the wool-trade, controlled by the State for revenue purposes. The half-stone of wool became a nail. In 1342 we find _quatuor clavos lanæ_, 4 nails of wool.

But _clavus_, a nail, became confounded with _clavis_, a key, and so in Southern France the nail-weight, introduced from England, became _clau_, a key, instead of _clavèu_, a nail. Thus the nail, Fr. _once_, _ongle_, became clove, Fr. _clou_, L. _clavis_, an iron nail; then in Prov. and Fr. _clau_, L. _clavus_, a key.

3. THE CARAT AND THE GRAIN

(A) _The Carat_

One would hardly recognise the golden Solidus of Rome in the French Sol, the brass halfpenny with the effigy of Louis XVI, current within my memory, or in the bronze Sou by which sums under three francs are still reckoned in France.

The Solidus, Aureus, or Exagium solidi, was so called because, representing the As, or unit of money, it was the gold-unit of which the semissis was the half and the tremissis the third.

Weighing 70·1 grains (under Constantine) it was 1/6 of the Roman mint-ounce = 420-2/3 grains, or 1/72 of the As libralis. Its weight was equal to 24 siliquæ, afterwards called Carats = 2·921 grains, and its third, the tremissis, weighed nearly 24 grains, the troy pennyweight. Hence pure gold was considered as solidus or ‘entire’ of 24 carats, and the quality or ‘touch’ of gold would be denoted by the number of carats of pure gold it contained out of 24. The carat of fineness was divided into 4 assay-grains, and these again into fourths. English gold coins are 22 carats fine since the time of Henry VIII, but the Plantagenet gold coins were usually 23 carats 3-1/2 grains fine, that is 191/192 = nearly 995 in 1000.

Thus the carat was 1/24 Solidus or 1/144 ounce.

When the Arab caliphs had conquered Egypt and the greater part of the Mediterranean countries, they followed Roman imperial customs and replaced the gold Exagium solidi, 1/72 of the As, by the gold mithkal, 1/72 of the Libra or Egypto-Roman pound. The Mithkal was then 1/6 of the Egypto-Roman ounce = 437 grains, so that it weighed 72·7 grains. It was divided like the Roman coin into 24 qirát, each = 3·035 grains and divided into 4 hubba or light grains, meaning corn-grains.

The Ptolemaïc or lesser Alexandrian talent had been divided into 60 minás of 12 ounces; these either 100 drachmæ or 12 × 12 carats of 3·1616 grains. The carat was an ancient Eastern weight, originally the flat seed of the caroub or locust-tree, _Ceratonia siliqua_, and in Greek _keration_. Throughout North Africa and in other Moslem countries there are two usual lesser units of weight:

The Mithkal = 72·7 grs. of 24 Kharūb or qirát The Dirhem = 48-1/2 „ „ 16 „ „ „

The carat, from a goldsmith’s assay-weight, became the unit for the weight of precious stones, varying slightly in different countries and usually divided into 4 diamond-carats.

THE CARATS

Roman siliqua 2·916 grs. 1/4 = ·729 gr. Roman-Egyptian carat 3·035 „ „ = ·758 „ Ptolemaïc „ 3·1616 „ „ = ·790 „ Venetian „ 3·196 „ „ = ·799 „ Egyptian (modern) „ 3·088 „ „ = ·772 „ Spanish (Moorish) „ 3·082 „ „ = ·770 „ Amsterdam (diamond) carat 3·165 „ Hamburg „ „ 3·176 „ = 1/142 Cologne oz. English „ „ 3·177 „ French metric „ 3·086 „ = ·2 gramme

The Eastern qirát has retained all the derived senses seen in the Western carat, 1/24 of a pure gold-unit. A cubit of 28 digits has an alternative division into 24 qirát. The kharūb of Egypt, 16 to a dirhem and 24 to a mithkal, is the weight-counterpart of the digit, 16 to the foot and 24 to the cubit. The density of brine is on a scale of 24 qirát. Points in a competition, shares in a business or ship are reckoned similarly. At Marseilles the ownership of a vessel is divided into 24 qirát as it is in England into sixty-fourths.

‘Ai un queirat sus un navire’: _Calendau_ v. (by Mistral).

Sometimes the 24 qirát are grouped into 4 _rob_ of 6 qirát. _Rob_ is from Ar. _al rabaa_, fourth; cf. _rubaiyat_ = quatrain. In Spain and Portugal the arroba, in Provence the _rub_ (It. _rubbio_) is the quarter-hundredweight.

_The Refiner’s Carat_

There is another use of the term Carat, confined to goldsmiths and refiners of the precious metals. The old troy pound was regarded as 24 carats; the carat was 4 grains, each of 4 quarters or of 60 grains. This system was used in the refinery of the Royal Mint up to 1882.

In Germany the Cologne marc (8 ounces) was divided by refiners (1) for gold into 24 carats of 12 grains; (2) for silver into 16 loth (half-ounces) of 18 grains.

It is probable that this system came to England with the Tower pound (12 ounces of the Cologne marc) and was continued with the Troy pound.

(B) _The Grain_

The names given to the smaller weights were taken from seeds just as measures of length were named after limb-lengths corresponding roughly to them. The kharoub may be used for a carat-weight. The ruttee or ráti, a scarlet pea with a black spot, is used in India as a goldsmith’s weight = 1·75 grain. Poppy-seeds, mustard-seeds, barley-corns, wheat-corns, have been used for minute weights. The Grain was the Greek _sitatrion_, a wheat-corn. It was perhaps from the custom of saying that 3 poppy-seeds = one mustard-seed, and that 6 of these = one barley-corn, &c., that an idea arose of these seeds being the basis of systems of weight. It has been seen that the definition of the Plantagenet mint-weight was that 32 wheat-corns were the pennyweight. This idea, hallowed in our statutes, is not yet extinct.

Ambroise Paré, in treating of medicinal weights (1582) said:

Every weight arises from some beginning and element. For as our bodies arise from the four first simple or elementary bodies, so all weights arise from the grain, which is _tanquam_ the beginning and the end of the remainder. We understand a grain of barley, neither dried nor mouldy, but well made and of medium fatness. From 10 grains of this sort comes the obolus, from 2 oboli or 20 grains the scruple ... &c.

This is medieval rubbish. As John Greaves, Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, in his ‘Discourse of the Roman foot’ (1647) wisely said:

I cannot but approve the counsel of Villapandus who adviseth such as will examine measures and weights to begin with the greater and not the lesser.... The most curious man alive with the exactest scale that the most skilful artisan can invent, shall never be able, out of the standard of one grain, to produce a weight equal to the weight of ten thousand grains.

While the subdivision of linear measures and of weights usually stopped at some familiar quantity named after a seed, yet efforts were sometimes made to get at an ultimate atom as the term of the series. The Hindus who began, or ended, a series of weights with one of the motes or fine particles of dust visible in a sunbeam, were imitated by the English moneyers who continued the 20-dwt. and 24-grain series by dividing the grains into 20 Mites, each of 24 Droits, each of 20 Periots, each of 24 Blanks, the blank being 1/230400 of a grain.

So our mint expressed the weight of a Stuart silver penny, not as 7-23/31 grains (all the silver coins having then a fraction of 31sts); that would have been too simple—but as 7 grains, 14 mites, 20 droits, 2 periots, 12 blanks. Even then the statement was not exact; one or two more infinitesimal units would have had to be added to the series.

It may be noted that 7-23/31 grains is simpler than the modern decimal equivalent 7·74193548, &c.

The origin of these mint-terms is obscure; the ‘N.E.D.’ casts no light on it. I consider their source to be—

Mite—mijt, a small Dutch coin.

Droit—a corruption of the Dutch _duit_, Sc. ‘doit,’ a fraction of a farthing. It was more properly written ‘dwit’; perhaps the _r_ was inserted to avoid confusion with ‘dwt.’

Periot—a period or full stop; perhaps influenced by ‘iota’ and ‘jot.’

Blank—as the blank in dominoes, still lower than the ace, point, or full stop, the Dutch As; perhaps influenced by ‘point-blank,’ in which the bull’s eye, at first the ‘point,’ became the blank or white.

It has been seen, under Troy weight, that there are two classes of grains:

The heavy grain 1/(20 × 24) = 1/480 ounce as in English Troy.

The light grain 1/(24 × 24) = 1/576 ounce as in French Troy.

The ounce of 576 light grains was used in France, some Italian states, Spain and Portugal. Elsewhere, throughout Europe, the mint and medicinal ounce was 480 heavy grains, the scruple being 20 grains.

The heavy and light grains have been connected respectively with the barley-corn and the wheat-corn. They may have been so originally, but it is more probable that the grain, at first a seed-weight, came to mean a division of the scruple into either 20 or 24 parts.

In Dutch mint-weight the Troy ounce was of 20 dwt. or Engels, each of 2 mail, 4 vierling, 8 troisken, 16 deusken, 32 azen or aces. The Aas was the wheat-corn of our mint-legend. In the Spanish Netherlands the Engel was increased to make the ounce 24 × 24 grains. The Engel thus became (Antwerp 1580) = 28·8 grains = 1-1/5 English dwt. The word Engel means ‘angel,’ not the angel coin weighing 3 engel 10 azen, but Angle—‘Angli, non Angeli.’

4. THE TUN AND THE FOTHER

These words belong to an onomatopœic class:

1. Bung—akin to ‘bomb,’ to Fr. _bonbonne_, a more or less globular vessel giving out a ‘bom’ sound when struck. In Somerset the bung-hole of a cask is the bum-hole; a ‘bun’ is a puffed somewhat semi-globular cake. Bung was probably a cask; the word is applied to a portly publican fancifully resembling one of his casks. Bumboat probably meant a boat carrying ‘bums’ or casks to ships.

2. Ton, tun—a large cask giving a thundering sound. L. _tonitru_, Fr. _tonnerre_, whence Fr. _tonne_, our ton for weight, tun for capacity.

3. Fr. _Foudre_, a ‘thundering big’ cask or vat. L. _fulgur_, Fr. _fouldre_, _foudre_, a thunder-bolt, in German _fuder_, whence our ‘fudder’ and ‘fother,’ about a ton of coal or of lead, a cartload of about a ton.