Grain

Grain (pronounced greyn)

(1) A small, hard seed, especially the seed of a food plant such as wheat, corn, rye, oats, rice, or millet.

(2) The gathered seed of food plants, especially of cereal plants.

(3) In brewing & distillation, the residuum (of grain and other inputs) after processing.

(4) Any small, hard particle (sand, gold, salt, pepper, gunpowder etc).

(5) The smallest unit of weight in many systems, originally determined by the weight of a plump grain of wheat. In the US and British systems, as in avoirdupois, troy, and apothecaries' weights, the grain is identical.  In an avoirdupois ounce there are 437.5 grains; in the troy and apothecaries' ounces there are 480 grains (one grain equals 0.0648 gram).  A grain is 1/7000th  of an avoirdupois pound.

(6) As “carat grain” of a quarter carat as a measure of gold purity, creating a 96-point scale between zero-100% purity (now only a historic reference).

(7) As “metric carat” (or “pearl grain”), a quarter carat used for measuring precious stones and pearls (now a standard set internationally at 50 mg).

(8) In historic French use, a weight of 1/9216th of a livre (equivalent to 53.11 mg at metricization and between 1812-1839 set to 54.25 mg from 1812–1839 as part of the mesures usuelles (the system of measurement introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) in 1812, used as compromise between the metric system and the traditional measurements, adherence to which was strong (especially among traders and in rural areas.  The system was restricted to the retail sector and remained current until 1840 when standards set in 1795 & 1799 were reinstituted).

(9) In botany, a rounded prominence on the back of a sepal, as in the common dock.

(10) In leather-working, the hair side of a piece of leather, or the marking on that side.

(11) In photography & videography, the visual texture in processed photographic film due to the presence of small particles of a metallic silver, or dye clouds, developed from silver halide that have received enough photons (now mostly a historic reference but still used where the effect appears (either naturally or in emulation) in digital output).

(12) In materials engineering, a region within a material having a single crystal structure or direction.

(13) A reddish dye made from the coccus insect, or kermes (hence, a red color of any tint or hue, as crimson, scarlet, etc) and sometimes used in poetry as the equivalent to Tyrian purple.

(14) In astronautics, a solid-fuel rocket's propellant charge; tending to the shape of a hollow cylinder, sometimes textured, the size varying, up to a point in proportion with the device to be equipped.

(15) In slang and idiomatic use, the smallest possible amount of anything (eg not a grain of truth).

(16) In slang and idiomatic use, in opposition to one's temper, inclination, or character (eg against the grain).

(17) In idiomatic use, as “take it with a grain of salt”, an expression of scepticism.

(18) Among drug users, a slang term for marijuana (highly regionalized and rare since the 1980s).

(19) The arrangement or direction of fibers in wood, or the pattern resulting from this.

(20) To feed grain to.

(21) To form grains, or to assume a granular form, as the result of crystallization; to granulate.

(22) To texture (or paint etc) a surface in imitation of the grain of a substance such as wood.

(23) In tanning, to remove the hair or fat from a skin (also used of the “softening” process).

(24) In horticulture, to yield fruit.

1250-1300:  Middle English grein (“a small, hard seed”, especially of one of the cereal plants, also (as a collective singular) “seed of wheat and allied grasses used as food”; “something resembling grain”; “a hard particle of other substances (salt, sand etc (and later, gunpowder etc)))” and the twelfth century Old French grein (seed, grain; particle, drop; berry; grain as a unit of weight) from the Latin grānum (seed, a grain, small kernel), from the primitive Indo-European root gre-no- (grain).  In the US, where corn developed a specialized sense because of its place in agricultural economics, it's the general word and used of wheat, rye, oats, barley etc.  The noun grainage describes the selection and storage of cocoons in sericulture (the rearing of silkworms for the production of silk).  Grain & graining are nouns & verbs; grainer is a noun, grained is a verb & adjective, grainy & grainage are adjectives; the noun plural is nouns.

A grain is a unit of measurement of mass, and, for the troy grain, equal to exactly 64.79891 milligrams. It is nominally based upon the mass of a single seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definitions of units of mass.  The grain was the legal foundation of traditional English (and later imperial) weight systems, and is the only unit that is equal throughout the troy, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' systems of mass.  The unit was based on the weight of a single grain of barley, considered equivalent to one and one third grains of wheat.  The grain was long the apothecaries basic unit and some retailers still use it as a “retro” expression (in conjunction with mandated systems, a la the parallel use of pounds & kilograms, popular in the UK). 

The earlier sense in English was the early thirteenth century “scarlet dye made from insects”, a meaning attached also to the Old French collateral form graine.  In Middle English grain also could mean “seed of flowers; pip of an apple, grape etc; a berry, legume, nut”.  The verb grained (simple past tense and past participle of grain) dates from the 1520s and was used in compounds associated with “having grains of a specified kind” (coarse-grained, close-grained, fine-grained etc) and also the process of staining a surface with an imitation wood grain.  Figuratively, the late fourteenth century meaning “the smallest possible quantity” reflected the practicalities of commerce rather than a scientific expression, the conveniently available devices of the age unable accurately to measure anything smaller and there anyway being then no practical use for such a measure (although since Antiquity philosophers had been pondering the concept of what came to be understood as “the atom”).  From the early fifteenth century it was thus standardized (in law and customary practice) as the smallest unit of weight (originally the weight of a plump, dry grain of wheat or barley from the middle of the ear).  From the 1560s, it was used to describe “roughness of surface; a roughness as of grains”, applied especially to timbers as a measure of the “quality due to the character or arrangement of its fibres”.    Grain alcohol was first noted in 1854 as a distiller’s category which reflected the practice of mixing alcohols derived from different grains for industrial and other purposes.

From this use emerged the phrase “against the grain” a metaphor from carpentry dating from circa 1650 expressing the experience that cutting across the fibres of wood is more difficult than cutting along them.  Although mere jargon to carpenters & cabinet-makers, shockingly, one patient in 1810 used the phrase in a letter describing enduring a mastectomy performed without the use of  anaesthetic: “When the wound was made, & the instrument was withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished, for the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp & forked poniards, that were tearing the edges of the wound – but when again I felt the instrument – describing a curve – cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator, who was forced to change from the right to the left – then, indeed, I thought I must have expired. I attempted no more to open my Eyes, – they felt as if hermetically shut, & so firmly closed, that the Eyelids seemed indented into the Cheeks.”   

Jaguar’s Mk X (1961-1966) and 420G (1966-1970) made extensive use of burl walnut woodgrain fittings; it was one of the more atmospheric interiors of the post-war years.  When the revised 420G was released, the upper section of the dashboard was replaced with a padded section which offered better passenger protection but lacked the visual charm.  The Mark X was a missed opportunity for Jaguar; although too big to enjoy much success in the UK and many export markets, it would have been ideal for the US had a 5-5.5 litre (300-340 cubic inch) version of the Daimler V8 been used.  Although a "proof of concept" prototype V8 Mark X had demonstrated how good such a thing would have been, Jaguar were still stuck in their "anti-V8" mindset and believed their future ranges should be powered exclusively by straight-six and V12 powerplants.  As it was, although the platform was superior, the use of the XK six (in the same tune as the E-Type (1961-1974) sports car) meant the Mark X was unsuited (in US conditions) to compete with the Cadillacs, Lincolns and Imperials.  While the 3.8 & 4.2 litre (231 & 258 cubic inch) six was ideal for the E-Type, in the bigger, heavier Mark X it didn't deliver effortless performance of the American cars, some of which were already running 7 litre (430 cubic inch) V8s. 

In both British Imperial and U.S. customary units, there are precisely 7,000 grains per avoirdupois pound, and 5,760 grains per troy pound or apothecaries’ pound.  The grain is commonly used to measure the mass of bullets and propellants and the term also refers to a single particle of gunpowder, the size of which varies according to requirements.  In archery, the grain is the standard unit used to weigh arrows.  In dentistry, the gold foil used as a material to restore teeth is measured in grains.  The (historically) 5-grain aspirin was the typical domestic dose while 7-grains was thought a "strong dose" (and the guidance label on some bottles of aspirin still indicates the dosage is 325 mg (5 grains).  Though no longer recommended, grains are still used occasionally in medicine as part of the apothecaries' system, especially in prescriptions for older medicines such as aspirin or phenobarbital.  In that example the grain is approximated to 65 mg, though the grain can also be approximated to 60 mg, depending on the medication and manufacturer.  The apothecaries' system has gradually been replaced by the metric system, and the use of the grain in prescriptions is now rare.

The Facel Vega Facel II (1962-1964) was France’s finest car of the post-war years.  However, its lush looking “woodgrain” dashboard was actually painted metal which may have disappointed some but most forgot that upon putting their fingers on the five, marvelously tactile, sliding heater controls which were in the style of the fittings used in aviation.  Being hand-painted, no two Facel Vega dashboards were exactly the same (just like Jaguar's real woodgrain) and the factory offered a "Lighter" or "Darker" effect.  Built with reliable, US-built Chrysler V8s, the "big" Facels were a success and the company's demise was the result of using a fragile, locally-made four-cylinder engine for a companion, smaller range.  The Facel II’s predecessor was the FV series (1954-1959 which, as the revised HK500, remained in production until 1962) and it was in his publisher’s FV3B the French author Albert Camus (1913–1960) died in crash, close to Villeblevin in the north-central region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.  As well as being a footnote in literary history, that Facel Vega (or, strictly speaking, one of its tyres) appears in the conspiracy theory which alleges the accident was the result of sabotage ordered by the Kremlin in response to the author’s criticism of Soviet actions in crushing the Hungarian uprising of 1956.  

In small-arms ammunition, the weight of the bullet is expressed in grains, a number often neglected which seems strange given weight affects (1) how a firearm recoils, (2) the trajectory of the bullet and (3) terminal ballistics (how the bullet behaves when striking a target).  As a general principle, a lighter bullet will achieve a higher speed which means it should maintain a straighter trajectory over a longer distance. However, a light bullet delivers less energy and is more susceptible to wind so it will tend to be blown off target more than something heavier.  For ultimate accuracy therefore, neither is absolutely preferable.  Nor is the grain count of necessity going to produce the same effect in every firearm because measures like calibre, muzzle energy and muzzle velocity all have an influence.  That was as true decades ago when the trend was towards smaller calibres as it is in the age of “bigger is better”.  In some cases, over some distances, a lighter bullet, moving faster, delivers more energy at the point of impact.  That’s one part of the equation but the math influences also the recoil.  It takes more energy to move a heavier bullet so, because for every action there should be an equal and opposite reaction, the heavier bullet should cause a greater recoil but, depending on the calibre and the firearm’s frame (some absorb more recoil), the lighter bullet might induce more recoil because more energy is thrust from the barrel, something further influenced by the propellant burn rate.

Lindsay Lohan recommends whole grains as part of a balanced diet.  “Whole grains” are those contain all three parts of the kernel (bran, germ & endosperm) in their natural proportions; in this, they differ from refined grains which have the bran and germ removed.  Minimally processed, whole grains are recommended by dieticians because they provide an optimal quantity of fibre, vitamins, minerals & phytochemicals, nutritional elements which can at least partially be lost by the refining process.  Example of whole grains include whole wheat, brown rice, oats, barley & quinoa and in their natural form, as well as the nutritional advantages, being dense, they tend to be “chewier and nuttier” than refined products and are valued by chefs for their texture.

Cereal & Serial

Cereal (pronounced seer-ee-uhl)

(1) Any plant of the grass family yielding an edible grain (wheat, rye, oats, rice, corn, maize, sorghum, millet etc).

(2) The grain from those plants.

(3) An edible preparation of these grains, applied especially to packaged, (often process) breakfast foods.

(4) Of or relating to grain or the plants producing it.

(5) A hamlet in Alberta, Canada.

(6) As Ceres International Women's Fraternity, a women's fraternity focused on agriculture, founded on 17 August 1984 at the International Conclave of FarmHouse fraternity.

1590s: From the sixteenth century French céréale (having to do with cereal), from the Latin cereālis (of or pertaining to the Roman goddess Ceres), from the primitive Indo-European ker-es-, from the root ḱer- (to grow”) from which Latin gained also sincerus (source of the English sincere) and crēscō (grow) (source of the English crescent).  The noun use of cereal in the modern sense of (a grass yielding edible grain and cultivated for food) emerged in 1832 and was developed from the adjective (having to do with edible grain), use of which dates from 1818, also from the French céréale (in the sense of the grains).  The familiar modern use (packaged grain-based food intended for breakfast) was a creation of US English in 1899.  If used in reference to the goddess Ceres, an initial capital should be used.  Cereal, cereology & cerealogist are nouns and ceralic is an adjective; the noun plural is cereals.

Lindsay Lohan mixing Pilk.

Cereal is often used as modifier (cereal farming, cereal production, cereal crop, non-cereal, cereal bar, pseudocereal, cereal dust etc) and a cereologist is one who works in the field of cerealogy (the investigation, or practice, of creating crop circles).  The term “cereal killer” is used of one noted for their high consumption of breakfast cereals although some might be tempted to apply it to those posting TikTok videos extolling the virtue of adding “Pilk” (a mix of Pepsi-Cola & Milk) to one’s breakfast cereal.  Pilk entered public consciousness in December 2022 when Pepsi Corporation ran a “Dirty Sodas” promotion for the concoction, featuring Lindsay Lohan.  There is some concern about the high sugar content in packaged cereals (especially those marketed towards children) but for those who want to avoid added sugar, Pepsi Corporation does sell “Pepsi Max Zero Sugar” soda and Pilk can be made using this.  Pepsi Max Zero Sugar contains carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, caffeine, citric acid, potassium benzoate & calcium disodium EDTA.

TikTok, adding Pilk to cereal and the decline of Western civilization.

A glass of Pilk does of course make one think of Lindsay Lohan but every mouthful of one’s breakfast cereal is something of a tribute to a goddess of Antiquity.  In 496 BC, Italy was suffering one of its periodic droughts and one particularly severe and lingering, the Roman fields dusty and parched.  As was the practice, the priests travelled to consult the Sibylline oracle, returning to the republic’s capital to report a new goddess of agriculture had to be adopted and sacrifices needed immediately to be made to her so rain would again fall on the land.  It was Ceres who was chosen and she became the goddess of agriculture and protector of the crops while the caretakers of her temple were the overseers of the grain market (they were something like the wheat futures traders in commodity exchanges like the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT)).  It was the will of the goddess Ceres which determined whether a harvest was prolific or sparse and to ensure abundance, the Romans ensured the first cuttings of the corn were always sacrificed to her.  It’s from the Latin adjective cereālis (of or pertaining to the Roman goddess Ceres) English gained “cereal”.

For millennia humanity’s most widely cultivated and harvested crop, cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain, the best known of which are rice, barley, millet, maize, rye, oats, sorghum & wheat.  Almost all cereals are annual crops (ie yielding one harvest per planting) although some strains of rice can be grown as a perennial and an advantages of cereals is the differential in growth rates and temperature tolerance means harvesting schedules can be spread from mid-spring until late summer.  Except for the more recent hybrids, all cereals are variations of natural varieties and the first known domestication occurred early in the Neolithic period (circa 7000–1700 BC).  Although the trend in cultivated area and specific yield tended over centuries to display a gradual rise, it was the “green revolution” (a combination of new varieties of cereals, chemical fertilizers, pest control, mechanization and precise irrigation which began to impact agriculture at scale in the mid twentieth century) which produced the extraordinary spike in global production.  This, coupled with the development of transport & distribution infrastructure (ports and bulk carriers), made possible the increase in the world population, now expected to reach around 10 billion by mid-century before declining.

Serial (pronounced seer-ee-uhl)

(1) Anything published, broadcast etc, in short installments at regular intervals (a novel appearing in successive issues of a magazine (ie serialized); a radio or TV series etc).

(2) In library & publishing jargon, a publication in any medium issued in successive parts bearing numerical or chronological designation and intended to be continued indefinitely.

(3) A work published in installments or successive parts; pertaining to such publication; pertaining to, arranged in, or consisting of a series.

(4) Occurring in a series rather than simultaneously (used widely, serial marriage; serial murderer, serial adulterer etc).

(5) Effecting or producing a series of similar actions.

(6) In IT, of or relating to the apparent or actual performance of data-processing operations one at a time (in the order of occurrence or transmission); of or relating to the transmission or processing of each part of a whole in sequence, as each bit of a byte or each byte of a computer word.

(7) In grammar, of or relating to a grammatical aspect relating to an action that is habitual and ongoing.

(8) In formal logic and logic mathematics (of a relation) connected, transitive, and asymmetric, thereby imposing an order on all the members of the domain.

(9) In engineering & mass-production (as “serial number”), a unique (to a certain product, model etc) character string (which can be numeric or alpha-numeric) which identifies each individual item in the production run.

(10) In music, of, relating to, or composed in serial technique.

(11) In modern art, a movement of the mid-twentieth century avant-garde in which objects or constituent elements were assembled in a systematic process, in accordance with the principles of modularity.

(12) In UK police jargon, a squad of officers equipped with shields and other protective items, used for crowd and riot control.

1823: From the New Latin word seriālis, from the Classical Latin seriēs (series), the construct being serial + -al on the Latin model which was seriēs + -ālis.  It was cognate to the Italian seriale.  The Latin seriēs was from serere (to join together, bind), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European ser- (to bind, put together, to line up).  The -al suffix was from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjectival suffix -ālis, ((the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) or the French, Middle French and Old French –el & -al.  It was use to denote the sense "of or pertaining to", an adjectival suffix appended (most often to nouns) originally most frequently to words of Latin origin, but since used variously and also was used to form nouns, especially of verbal action.  The alternative form in English remains -ual (-all being obsolete).  The –alis suffix was from the primitive Indo-European -li-, which later dissimilated into an early version of –āris and there may be some relationship with hel- (to grow); -ālis (neuter -āle) was the third-declension two-termination suffix and was suffixed to (1) nouns or numerals creating adjectives of relationship and (2) adjectives creating adjectives with an intensified meaning.  The suffix -ālis was added (usually, but not exclusively) to a noun or numeral to form an adjective of relationship to that noun. When suffixed to an existing adjective, the effect was to intensify the adjectival meaning, and often to narrow the semantic field.  If the root word ends in -l or -lis, -āris is generally used instead although because of parallel or subsequent evolutions, both have sometimes been applied (eg līneālis & līneāris).  Serial, serializer , serialization serialism & serialist are nouns, serialing, serialize & serialed are verbs, serializable is an adjective and serially is adverb; the noun plural is serials.

The “serial killer” is a staple of the horror film genre.  Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me (2007) was not well received upon release but it has since picked up a cult following.

The adjective serial (arranged or disposed in a rank or row; forming part of a series; coming in regular succession) seems to have developed much in parallel with the French sérial although the influence of one on the other is uncertain.  The word came widely to be used in English by the mid nineteenth century because the popular author Charles Dickens (1812–1870) published his novels in instalments (serialized); sequentially, chapters would appear over time in periodicals and only once the series was complete would a book appear containing the whole work.  The first use of the noun “serial” to mean “story published in successive numbers of a periodical” was in 1845 and that came from the adjective; it was a clipping of “serial novel”.  By 1914 this had been extended to film distribution and the same idea would become a staple of radio and television production, the most profitable for of which was apparently the “mini-series”, a term first used in 1971 although the concept had been in use for some time.  Serial number (indicating position in a series) was first recorded in 1866, originally of papers, packages and such and it was extended to soldiers in 1918.  Surprisingly perhaps, given the long history of the practice, the term, “serial killer” wasn’t used until 1981 although the notion of “serial events” had been used of seemingly sequential or related murders as early as the 1960s.  On that model, serial became a popular modifier (serial rapist, serial adulterer, serial bride, serial monogamist, serial pest, serial polygamy etc)

For those learning English, the existence of the homophones “cereal” & “serial” must be an annoying quirk of the language.  Because cereals are usually an annual crop, it’s reasonable if some assume the two words are related because wheat, barley and such are handled in a “serial” way, planting and harvesting recurrent annual events.  Doubtless students are told this is not the case but there is a (vague) etymological connection in that the Latin serere meant “to join together, to bind” and it was used also to mean “to sow” so there is a connection in agriculture: sowing seeds in fields.  For serial, the connection is structural (linking elements in a sequence, something demonstrated literally in the use in IT and in a more conceptual way in “serial art”) but despite the differences, both words in a way involve the fundamental act of creating order or connection.

Serial art by Swiss painter Richard Paul Lohse (1902–1988): Konkretion I (Concretion I, 1945-1946), oil on pavatex (a wood fibre board made from compressed industrial waste) (left), Zwei gleiche Themen (Two same topics, 1947), colored pencil on paper (centre) and  Konkretion III (1947), oil on pavatex.

In modern art, “serial art” was a movement of the mid-twentieth century avant-garde in which objects or constituent elements were assembled in a systematic process in accordance with the principles of modularity.  It was a concept the legacy of which was to influence (some prefer “infect”) other artistic schools rather than develop as a distinct paradigm but serial art is still practiced and remains a relevant concept in contemporary art.  The idea was of works based on repetition, sequences or variations of a theme, often following a systematic or conceptual approach; the movement was most active during the mid-twentieth century and a notable theme in Minimalism, Donald Judd (1928-1994), Andy Warhol (1928–1987), Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) (there must have been something “serial” about 1928) and Richard Paul Lohse (1902-1988) all pioneers of the approach.  Because the techniques of the serialists were adopted by many, their style became interpolated into many strains of modern art so to now speak of it as something distinctive is difficult except in a historic context.  The embrace by artists of digital tools, algorithms, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies has probably restored a new sort of “purity” to serial art because generative processes are so suited to create series of images, sculptures or digital works that explore themes like pattern, progression, or variation, the traditional themes of chaos, order and perception represented as before.  In a way, serial art was just waiting for lossless duplication and the NFT (Non-fungible token) and more conservative critics still grumble the whole idea is little different to an architect’s blueprint which documents the structural framework without the “skin” which lends the shape its form.  They claim it's the engineering without the art.

Relics of the pre-USB age; there were also 25 pin serial ports.

In IT hardware, “serial” and “parallel” refer to two different methods of transmitting data between devices or components and the distinction lies in how data bits are sent over a connection.  In serial communication, data was transmitted one bit at a time over as little as single channel or wire which in the early days of the industry was inherently slow although in modern implementations (such as USB (Universal Serial Bus) or PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express)) high speeds are possible.  Given what was needed in the early days, serial technology was attractive because the reduction in wiring reduced cost and complexity, especially over the (relatively) long distances at which serial excelled and with the use of line-drivers, the distances frequently were extended to hundreds of yards.  The trade-off was of course slower speed but these were simpler times.  In parallel communication, data is transmitted multiple bits at a time, each bit traveling simultaneously over its own dedicated channel and this meant it was much faster than serial transmission.  Because more wires were demanded, the cost and complexity increased, as did the potential for interference and corruption but most parallel transmission was over short distances (25 feet (7½ metres) was “long-distance”) and the emergence of “error correcting” protocols made the mode generally reliable.  For most, it was the default method of connecting a printer and for large file sizes the difference in performance was discernible, the machines able to transmit more data in a single clock cycle due to simultaneous bit transmission.  Except for specialized applications or those dealing with legacy hardware (and in industries like small-scale manufacturing where such dedicated machines can be physically isolated from the dangers of the internet, parallel and serial ports and cables continue to render faithful service) parallel technology is effectively obsolete and serial connections are now almost universally handled by the various flavours of USB.

Whiskey & Whisky

Whiskey & Whisky (pronounced hwis-kee or wis-kee)

(1) An alcoholic liquor distilled from a fermented mash of cereals (the grains usually barley, rye, or corn) and typically containing 43-50% alcohol; the end product usually aged in oak barrels and sometimes a blend from various mixes.

(2) A drink of whiskey or whisky.

(3) Of, relating to, or resembling whiskey or whisky.

(4) A light gig or carriage (historical reference only).

(5) In international standards (as “w for whiskey”), the NATO, ICAO, ITU & IMO phonetic alphabet code for the letter “W” (familiar to many in the form WTF).

1715: A variant of usque,an abbreviation of usquebaugh, from the Irish uisce beatha (water of life) or the Scots Gaelic uisge-beatha (water of life), ultimately a translation of the Medieval Latin aqua vītae (water of life (originally an alchemical term for unrefined alcohol)).  The form whiskybae has been obsolete since the mid eighteenth century.  The Scots and Irish forms were from the Proto-Celtic udenskyos (water) + biwotos (life), from biwos(alive).  The Old Irish uisce (water) was from the primitive Indo-European ud-skio-, a suffixed form of the root wed- (water; wet); bethu (life), from the primitive Indo-European gwi-wo-tut-, a suffixed form of gwi-wo-, from the root gwei- (to live). The noun plurals are whiskies & whiskeys.  Although iskie bae had been known in the 1580s, it appears unrelated to usquebea (1706), the common form of which was uisge beatha which in 1715 became usquebaugh, then whiskeybaugh & whiskybae, the most familiar phonetic form of which evolved as “usky”, influencing the final spellings which remain whisky & whiskey.  Wisely, the Russians avoided the linguistic treadmill, the unchanging vodka freely translated as “little water”.

The Medieval Latin aqua vītae (water of life) had great appeal to those Europeans making drinks (especially distilled spirits).  In Sweden there was the cordial akvavit, the French called Brandy eau de vie and in Scotland and Ireland, the most popular liquor was called uisge beatha, all these forms meaning “water of life”.  The Gaelic variety was with both alacrity and enthusiasm embraced by the English, one noted champion and consumer being Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) although given the fondness for strong drink long shown south of the border, it’s likely that even without the royal imprimatur, success would have anyway been assured and it was certainly guaranteed after 1541 when Henry dissolved the monasteries and with that one act, also the English monopoly on distilling enjoyed by the monks.  The spellings whisky and whiskey are used world-wide to distinguish regional drinks (Scotch whisky, Irish whiskey, bourbon whiskey etc) and the terms “Scotch” and “Bourbon” are common ellipticals for their types.  The adoption of the spelling “whiskey” in the US during the nineteenth century was unusual in that the usual US practice was to simplify things by removing a letter or two but it was technically an adoption of an older form rather than an innovation.   

John Walker & Sons, holders of the Royal Warrant, made Diamond Jubilee to mark the sixtieth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II in 2012.

Diamond Jubilee is a blend of grain and malt varieties, all of which were distilled in 1952, the year of Her Majesty's accession.  To further the connection, the whiskies were blended in two small casks made with oak from the Royal Estate at Sandringham and laid down at the Royal Lochnagar distillery close to Balmoral Castle.  The blend was bottled on 6 February 2012 (sixtieth anniversary of the accession) and released in a limited edition of sixty.  The list price was US$198,000.

Having a belt.  Crooked Hillary Clinton enjoys a shot of Crown Royal Bourbon Whiskey, Bronko's restaurant, Crown Point, Indiana, Saturday 12 April, 2008.

Scotch, Bourbon and Rye are all types of whiskey or whisky, both distilled liquors made from a fermented mash of cereal grains and aged in containers, traditionally of oak.  The most commonly used grains are corn, barley malt, rye, and wheat but what makes each type different is not only the grain but also the distilling process, the aging and critically, the water used.  Despite the widespread perception that there’s a clear rule about the application of “whisky” and “whiskey”, although there are conventions, the distinctions are not always absolute and the only reliable guide is what the maker chooses to print on the label.  As a general principle, (1) the spelling whiskey is common in the US & Ireland while whisky is used elsewhere and (2) all labelled as scotch is whisky while other types tend to be whiskeys.  However, in the US, the two spellings were used interchangeably until the mid-nineteenth century when whiskey began to predominate but it wasn’t until the widespread availability of style-guides in the late 1940s that US use became consistent, writers using whiskey as the accepted spelling for aged grain spirits made in the US and whisky for those distilled overseas.  Despite that, many American brands use whisky on their labels, and the Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits which sets out the legal regulations for spirits sold in the US, also uses whisky.  North of the border, the Canadians prefer whisky.  Within Scotland, the whisky that is locally made is called simply whisky, while everywhere else, (and in the UK regulations that govern its production), it’s almost always called “Scotch whisky” or "Scotch".  Anything made in Ireland is a whiskey whereas what’s distilled in Japan, in the style of the Scottish product, is whisky.

Lindsay Lohan advertising the (fictitious) Japanese chewing gum Number One Happy Whiskey Chew, filmed for the TV show Anger Management, March 2013.

Whiskey and whisky can be straight or blended, the former not mixed with anything or only with other whiskey from the same distiller and distillation period; the latter can include various combinations of whiskey products from different distillers and different distillation periods as well as other flavorings, such as fruit juice; blended whiskeys generally have a lighter flavor than the straight.  With Scotch whisky, the distinction is fourfold: (1) Pure Malt which is a spirit made solely from barley malt.  It’s an uncompromising taste, purer (and usually much more expensive) and more intense in flavour, with what the aficionados (who, like the “cork dorks” who “taste” wine have their own language of criticism) tend to describe pure malts in terms of their “personalities”.  Confusingly, a pure malt is not the same as a single malt and for this reason pure malts also received the denomination “vatted”, helping buyers to differentiate.  (2) The single malt differs from the pure in that the former has only the one malt, the result of a single distillation whereas a pure malt has at least four.  Single malts are almost always stronger but not necessarily more expensive than pure malts.  For those searching for some scientific reason to justify their fondness for single-malt whiskies, there is some research which suggests consumption may lead to a reduction in internal cancers, apparently because single-malts are high in ellagic acid, an antioxidant thought to absorb rogue cancer cells.  Critics note a more effective might be to eat more fruit, higher still in ellagic acid but, in typical academic fashion, all agree “more research is required”. (3) Grain Whisky is a simpler Scotch, produced using only the distillation of grains such as rye, wheat or corn and can thus be produced much more quickly.  The grain whiskies are much cheaper and the manufacturing process is commonly used throughout the world.  (4) Blended Scotch is the most consumed.  Produced using a combination of grains and single malts, blends deliberately are mixed to be both affordable and accessible, the taste perhaps less challenging than pure or single malt Scotch, both of which have a minimum maturation time of 12-15 years while a blended Scotch can be ready in eight.  However, at the upper end of the market, there are blends matured for 24 years.

By their colors they shall be known.

Scotch is a whisky made from grain, primarily barley which is malted and then heated over a peat fire.  There is much UK legislation which governs the definitions of various categories and marketing of Scotch whisky and it can’t be so-named unless wholly produced and bottled in Scotland.  Bourbon is a type of whiskey which was first produced in Kentucky and regulations demand it must be based on a mix with at least 51% mash from corn in its production.  It uses a sour mash process, so-called because the mash is fermented with yeast and includes a portion from a mash that has already been fermented.  For a whiskey to be called bourbon, it must be made in the United States but it’s a myth it can come only from Kentucky or Tennessee.  Rye uses either a rye mash or one with a mix of a rye and malt and while US regulations demand a minimum 51% rye content, other jurisdictions, such as Canada, don’t set a lower limit.  Bourbon is one of some twenty defined categories of American whiskey and it’s thought the name is derived from Bourbon Street in New Orleans, on the basis that the name was used first in 1854 while the claim of a link to Bourbon County in Kentucky wasn’t asserted until twenty-odd years later.

Glenfiddich 1937 Rare Collection.  Laid down before the Second World War, all bottles of this came from a single barrel held at the firm’s Dufftown warehouse, the last filled in 2001.  A auction in Scotland in 2016, one sold for US$87,000 but another changed hands in the US in 2020 for US$120,00, a handy appreciation of about 40%.

Whisky and whiskey, like rum, gin and other spirits, have a history of involvement with fiscal systems.  In eighteenth century Pennsylvania, whiskey was both commodity and currency, used for cooking, medicine and drinking as well as being a store of value and a means of exchange and there began the Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794), a violent protest against the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government.  The new tax became law in 1791, levied to generate revenue so the debt incurred during the War of Independence could be serviced and to call it the “whiskey tax” was misleading because it applied to all distilled spirits, but consumption of American whiskey had greatly increased while rum production hadn’t recovered its pre-war levels so the name stuck.

Lindsay Lohan leaving the Whisky Mist night club, London, June 2014.

Less violent was the Whisky War (also called the Liquor War), conducted (1984-2022) in gentlemanly fashion between Canada and Denmark, two of the world’s more civilized nations.  The Whiskey War was “fought” over a border dispute concerning Hans Island, a previously obscure barren and uninhabited lump of rock (1.3 km² (½ sq mi)) which sits in the Kennedy Channel between Greenland (a Danish territory) and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.  The actual border had been left unresolved in 1973 when other matters in the region were resolved but in 1984, Canadian soldiers provoked a border incident by raising the national flag and leaving a bottle of Canadian Whiskey.  In retaliation, the Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs visited the island, respectfully lowering and folding the Canadian flag, raising the Danish standard, taking the whiskey and leaving a bottle of Cognac.  The flag ceremonies and exchanges of bottles of liquor went on until 2005 when both countries agreed on a process to settle the dispute.  Remarkably, this took until 2022 when it was announced a border had been agreed, dividing the inhospitable place equally between the Canadian territory of Nunavut and the Danish constituent country of Greenland.  As geographers and cartographers updated their records, they were pleased to note the historically unusual side-effect the transaction meant Canada and Denmark now shared a land border whereas before, each had a border only with one other country (respectively the US and Germany).

Lindsay Lohan advertising the (fictitious) Japanese chewing gum Number One Happy Whiskey Chew, filmed for the TV show Anger Management, March 2013.  It was interesting to note that what was notionally a Japanese product was labelled "whiskey" rather than "whisky" which is the usual form in the Japanese domestic market.  That may have been something dictated by the sitcom's plot. 

Granular

Granular (pronounced gran-yuh-ler)

(1) Of the nature of granules; grainy.

(2) Composed of or bearing granules or grains.

(3) Showing a granulated structure.

(4) In computing, an object existing as a singular form at the level of the file system but which exists at the application level in multiple parts.

(5) Relating to or containing particles having a strong affinity for nuclear stains, as in certain bacteria.

1762 (although use not widespread until 1794): From the Late Latin granulum (granule, a little grain), diminutive of the Latin granum (grain, seed) from the primitive Indo-European gre-no- (grain) + -ar (from the From Latin -āris (of, near, pertaining to), the suffix appended to various words, often nouns, to make the adjectival form; added most often, but not exclusively, to words of Latin origin).  The word seems rather suddenly to have replaced the late fourteenth century granulous.  Granular, granularity, granule & granulation are nouns, granulate is a verb & adjective and granulatory is an adjective.

Terminology describing degrees of granularity

As granular has become a more widely used word, fastidious types have noted the increasing frequency of things being described as "more granular" or "less granular" and this elicits disapproval because it’s imprecise.  Something granular is composed of (usually small), discrete entities as opposed to being continuous and that’s a binary distinction, not a matter of degree so it’s inherently unclear if "more granular" and "less granular" indicate finer or coarser granularity.  For clarity, one should speak only of finer or coarser granularity.

Lindsay Lohan represented in granular art, an artificial intelligence (AI) generated artwork created by Wout from AI Fountain as part of the Curated Community Art initiative (CCAI) and finished in Adobe Photoshop.  Each digital artwork created by this algorithm is unique and made from a set of parameters; process and output are thus both inherently granular.

In computing, the concept of granularity exists in many forks and layers.  Users deal frequently with granular data, most typically when handling what appears to exist in many parts but which is, to the system, at least one layer, a single object.  For system administrators, it’s an especially handy attribute when it’s necessary to recover one small piece of data which has been copied or backed-up as something really huge and there are big machine operators which now routinely handle data sets of a size which only a few years ago were unimaginably large.  For them, the ability to look at the whole and be able to extract pieces, drilling down if need be to individual bytes, makes easily possible what would otherwise require much time and hardware; hence the metaphor of granularity, a mechanism to find a particular grain in a silo of many trillions.

That’s useful but really is just brute-force, the massive up-scaling up of something which has existed since the earliest forms of digital storage.  More intriguing is the recent emergence of Granular computing (GrC), a fork in information processing, the focus of which is information granules, entities created from the processes of data abstraction and derivations from data.  The source and structure of this data is not the imperative; what matters are the relationships (of which there may be many) which can, for example, simultaneously be both the extent of difference and a dependence on indistinguishability.  GrC, as it now exists, is more of a conceptual direction than a coherent process or even a theoretical perspective.  Its most promising implication is perhaps the granules which might form as relationships between previously disparate data sets are explored.  This may allow previously unrealized correlates to be identified, perhaps enabling humanity to mine the accumulate data sets for what Donald Rumsfeld (1932–2021: US Secretary of Defense 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) called the unknown knowns.  Rumsfeld may have been evil but his mind could sparkle and many unknown knowns may await.  

Crop

Crop (pronounced krop)

(1) In agriculture, the cultivated produce of the ground, both while growing and when harvested.

(2) In aggregate, the yield of such produce for a particular season.

(3) The yield of some other product in a season.

(4) A supply produced in a given (not necessarily annual or seasonal) period.

(5) A collection or group of persons or things appearing or occurring together (often as “current crop”, “this year’s crop etc”).

(6) The stock or handle of a whip.

(7) In equine use, variously (1) a short riding whip consisting of a stock without a lash (also called riding crop) or (2) less commonly, the lashing end of a whip, both styles used in the BDSM community.

(8) In zoology, a pouch in the esophagus of many birds, in which food is held for later digestion or for regurgitation to nestlings (also called the craw);  a chamber or pouch in the foregut of arthropods and annelids for holding and partly crushing food.

(9) In agriculture, the act of cropping (including having animals crop by allowing them to eat what’s growing).

(10) A mark produced by clipping the ears (used with cattle and other livestock).

(11) In hairdressing, a close-cropped hairstyle or a head of hair so cut.

(12) An entire tanned hide of an animal.

(13) In mining, (1) an outcrop of a vein or seam or (2) tin ore prepared for smelting.

(14) To cut off or remove the head or top of plants, grass etc; to cut off the ends or part of something; to cut short.

(15) As crop-top (or crop top & croptop), a shirt or top cut high to expose the midriff.

(16) In photography and image manipulation, to cut off unwanted parts of a print, negative or digital image (historically those parts at the edges but the term has long been used for general editing).

(17) The entire tanned hide of an animal.

(18) In medicine and pathology, a group of vesicles at the same stage of development in a disease.

(19) In geology, the shortened form of outcrop.

(20) In architecture, the foliate part of a finial.

Pre 900: From the Middle English crop & croppe, from the Old English crop & cropp & croppa (sprout, or top of a plant, bunch or cluster of flowers, ear of wheat (or other grain), paunch, crown of a tree, craw of a bird, a kidney), from the Proto-West Germanic kropp, from the Proto-Germanic kruppaz (body, trunk, crop), from the primitive Indo-European grewb- (to warp, bend, crawl).  It was cognate with Dutch krop (crop), the German Low German Kropp (a swelling on the neck, the craw, maw), the German Kropf (the craw, ear of grain, head of lettuce or cabbage), the Swedish kropp (body, trunk), the Norwegian kröypa (to bend), the Old Norse kroppr (rump, body) and the Icelandic kroppur (a hunch on the body).  Crop was related to crap and was a doublet of group and croup.  The verb was from the Middle English croppen (to cut, pluck and eat), from the Old English croppian.  It was cognate with the Scots crap (to crop), the Dutch kroppen (to cram, digest), the Low German kröppen (to cut, crop, stuff the craw), the German kröpfen (to crop), the Icelandic kroppa (to cut, crop, pick); the sense of all was literally, to remove the crop (top, head, ear) of a plant.  Crop is a noun & verb, cropping & cropped (cropt was the archaic spelling); the noun plural is crops.

Lindsay Lohan in crop tops.  All these photographs have been cropped to render them in the same aspect ratio.

Crop started modestly enough for a word which evolved to enjoy such a definitional range and use idiomatic form: In the Old English it meant only (1) craw of a bird & (2) rounded head or top of a herb and while the latter is found also in High German dialects, the subsequent developments in the sense of “head or top” generally and of “produce to be harvested from the fields” appear exclusive to English.  The meaning "grain and other cultivated plants grown and harvested" (especially "the grain yield of one year"), having been in Anglo-Latin in the early 1200s, was adopted in Middle English a century later, the sense development thought something which happened under the influence of the early thirteenth century verbal meaning "cut off the top of a plant".  From the notion in agriculture of “top” cam the use to describe the "upper part of a whip" which evolved by the 1560s be the "handle of a whip" (1560s) and thus by 1857 "a kind of whip used by horsemen in the hunting field" (1857).  Unlike traditional whips (which were really one long lash), it proved useful in having a rigid handle and thus could be hand for things like opening gates or other tasks when a wand or stick helped.

Riding crops are a staple device in the BDSM (Bondage, Discipline (although some say Dominance & submission is more indicative of actual practice) & SadoMasochism) community.  The photograph at the right was a "mid-session" promotional shot and has been cropped. 

The general sense of "anything gathered when ready or in season" dates from the 1570s and the idea of the “thick, short head of hair" was from 1795, both developed from the late fourteenth century sense of "top or highest part of anything".  In Middle English, crop and rote (the whole plant, crop and root) was figurative of totality or perfection.  The concept of the crop-circle dates from a surprisingly recent 1974 although they had been noted before.  The verb in the sense of “cut off the top of a plant” evolved from the verb around the turn of the thirteenth century, extended by circa 1350 to animals (originally of sheep) feeding on plants.  The general meaning “to cut off” dates from the mid fifteenth century, used from circa 1600 to refer to the practice of “cutting off a part of the ear of an animal as a mark of identification and ownership”.  In tailoring, as a term to describe the clipping of cloth, it’s been in use since 1711 and surprisingly perhaps, in fashion the staple crop top seems first to have been described as such only after 1984.  Crop and harvest can for many purposes be used interchangeably to refer to a season’s produce.  Yield refers to the return in food obtained from land at the end of a season of growth and can also be used in highly technical ways to measure metrics of specific efficiency and output.  Crop also denotes the amount produced at one cutting or for one particular season while harvest denotes either the time of reaping and gathering, or the gathering, or that which is gathered: the season of harvest; to work in a harvest; a ripe harvest.  Produce once described little more than household vegetables and still has that sense but the use has expanded.

Top before & after: The undesirable part of the photo has been cropped-out.  Lower before & after: The undesirable part of the photo has been edited-out.

In photography and image manipulation, cropping is the cutting off of un-wanted parts of a print, negative or digital image.  Technically, a crop is performed only at the edges and the removal of any other part is an edit by "crop" has long been industry slang for just about any modification.

Crop-up (to sprout, appear apparently without design from below the surface), although now most associated with agriculture was actually a mid-nineteenth century borrowing from mining where it referred to the geological phenomenon of the veins of ore or strata of rock “coming to the surface and becoming visible on the ground", that use noted since the 1660s.  The cropper dates from 1858 (usually as “come-a-cropper”) was a fall, originally from horseback and, as it usually involved the rider being thrown over the horse's head, there was always the connotation of failure but it now refers to a fall of any kind and elicits usually sympathy or myth depending on the severity of injury.  Also based on the idea of “head, sprout or top”, outcrop was first use in geology in 1801 to mean “exposure of rocks at the surface”.  The noun sharecropper (and share-cropper) was coined 1887 to describe the particular form of leasehold used in the southern US whereby a land-holder would lease land to a tenant to plant and harvest, also receiving a defined share of the crop. The noun share-crop came into use in 1867 and was used as a verb by 1871 although the noun sharecropping seems not to have been in use before 1936.  The cash-crop was one produced for sale rather than consumption; a bumper crop was a very good harvest (based on an old meaning of bumper as “big, full to the brim”); and crop rotation was a method of agricultural management designed to preserve the fertility of soil and limit the proliferation of pests; crop dusting was the spraying of crops with fertilizer or insecticide from low-flying aircraft dubbed crop-dusters; the cream of the crop is the best of any particular group.