The Measure of a Man

I was talking with my wife recently (Hey! It could happen!) and we were speculating whether gram is a measure of weight or volume. Then I started wondering why volume is a descriptor of size, one of a set of books, and loudness. So here we go with this week's post. 

It is difficult when talking about weights and measures to define what you're talking about. Take gram, for instance. It is defined as a metric unit of mass or weight equal to 15.432 grains or one thousandth of a kilogram. A grain is not just any grain. It is a plump grain of wheat (don't try and cheat me with a skinny grain of wheat - I'll have none of that.) That weight called a grain is the same amount in avoirdupois, troy, apothecary, British and American systems. So take 16 plump grains of wheat, cut the 16th one into 1000 pieces (wear your glasses) and put 432 with the other 15 to weigh the same as a gram. Take 15,432 plump grains of wheat and you have a kilogram. A paperclip is about the weight of one gram.

The word gram came to English (the English spelling is gramme) in 1797 as the metric system was being developed during the French Revolution. The French got it from the Late Latin word gramma, which came from the Greek word gramma, both of which mean "small weight." The metric system in France was officially adopted in 1799.

Volume can mean one of a set of published works, or it can mean the amount of space that an object of substance occupies, or it can be a measure of loudness. How do we get three such different meanings for one word? When volume came into English in the late 1300s from the Old French word volume it already had two of the three meanings, both one of a set of written works (printing wasn't invented yet) and size/girth. It referred primarily to a roll of parchment or a bound book. It had come to French from Latin, where volumen means "roll" or "that which is rolled." In the 1520s the sense developed that anything about the size or weight of a book was/had a volume of.... Within 100 years both meanings took hold in both French and English.

So where did the meaning of loudness come from? Unfortunately I have been unable to uncover that development. I consulted things like "The History of Audio and Sound Measurement", a paper presented at the 94th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society in Berlin in 1993. But I found one explanation that said "The phrase 'volume of sound' is a natural application of the 'bulk, mass, quantity' meaning. It occurs in a review of the third performance of Handel's 'Messiah' from 1784." That works for me. Eventually the "...of sound" became understood. 

There is a word above that hasn't been covered in this blog: avoirdupois. While the French adopted the metric system, the standard system of weights in England (except for gems, precious metals and medicine) since the late 1400s has been called the avoirdupois system. Avoirdupois is a misspelling of the Middle English (@1300) phrase avoir-de-peise which is a change in spelling from the Old French avoir de pois meaning "goods of weight" according to etymonline.com. The word for weight comes from the Latin word for "to weigh", pendere, from which we get the word pendant. In case you wonder, one of the early means used to measure length was the distance of a pendulum swing. (If you want to read more about the efforts of Picard and Huygens and Wilkins and Jefferson to use pendulums to establish a standard length, click here.) 

So the volume of my avoirdupois is significantly more than a gram, or a kilogram.