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.