The Abilene reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1883-1888, 1885-11-12
INCH AND OUNCE.
Origin of the Terms and Their Application
in Past Centuries.

Origin of the Terms and Their Application
in Past Centuries.
As the Jews had a mystical reverence
for seven, and the ancient Welsh and
Celts for three, and the Greeks per-
feet philosophy constructed out of the
harmonies of all sorts of numbers, so
the Romans fell back upon a scale of,
or, more properly, scale with base
of, six. Accordingly, as they divided
the pound into twelve uncle, so they
also divided the foot, which was the
standard of linear measure. into twelve
sections, and called these sections
uncia, too. But how did they get the
inch originally? Rather, how did they
get at the pound? for that, and not the
inch, is the unit. There seems to be
no precise information. They would
divide any unit into twelfths, and a
prevailing notion was at one time that
the linear unc,a was really the original,
and was then transferred as a name to
weight. This, though plausible, is
hardly the case. Sometimes. especially
in Old-fashioned books, written at a
time when philology was not what it
is now, it was the fashion to derive the
uncia from the same word in the
Greek, because after the revival of
letters in Europe the admiration of the
Greek became so great that whenever
similar words were found in it and
some other language, it was always
said that other language borrowed
them from the Greek. This is very far
from being always so; and in the pres
ent instance the very reverse appears
to have occurred. The ounce is liter
ally the twelfth; and thus we see at
once the sense of speaking of an ounce
OF land and an inch of milk, just as of
an inch Of mans will, or an inch of
interest for money on loan. 1t was
always the twelfth of unit-twelfth OF
an hour; twelfth of a jugerum, that
half-acre which the two oxen plOwed
in a day; twelfth of a sextarius. or
equivalent to our pint; twelfth of the
entire hereditas; twelfth of the princi-
pal lent on hire when it was money as
usury-i. e., over eight per cent. 1t
is accordingly as much of a mistake
to say that the primary meaning of
the word is a linear, which is to say
that it comes straight from the Greek
into the Latin, and thence on to us.
The riddle is plain enough when we get
to the true origin of the word-a
twelfth. Once. indeed, it used to be
said that the true origin was that the
word meant a thumb breadth. because its
equivalent pollex in linear measure was
often used in its place. But this is not
the case. Some of the old Latins them
selves thought it meant literally the
unit; but even this will not hold beside
the proper Specification of the twelfth.
The pound weight was really never
divided by inches or ounces. 1t was
divided by twelfths. by halls, by thirds,
by fourths and by sixths. And here,
again. we see what a convenient base
system of tweltths is for division COM
pared with a system of tenths, which
could only be divided evenly in two
ways-by two and five. For seven
ounces they used the literal seven
twelfths; for eight ounces they said two
parts, I. e., two thirds; for nine. want
ing fourth, which with us reads like
roundabout way of expressing three
quarters; for ten, wanting a sixth; for
eleven, wanting a twelfth.-LOnd0n
STANDARD.