There's a giant white board in our lunch room that has become a place for co-workers to write puzzles for others to try and figure out. Recently someone put up a list of "Expressions" that were to be decoded. For example one would be:
3=P for a FG in F _____________________
The answer is Points for a Field Goal in Football. One of these expressions sparked an interesting conversation. The expression:
500=S of P in a R ____________________
The answer to this one is Sheets of Paper in a Ream. One of our Swedish colleagues was confused by the term 'ream', as he hadn't heard it before. He asked what a ream was, and we said, "Well, it's 500 sheets of paper." We decided that it must come from some old word and is just used in common English, so of course I had to look it up:
ream(n)
1. A quantity of paper, formerly 480 sheets, now 500 sheets or, in a printer's ream, 516 sheets.
2. A very large amount. Often used in the plural: reams of work to do.
[Middle English reme, from Old French reime, from Old Spanish resma, from Arabic rizma, bundle, from razama, to bundle; see rzm in Semitic roots.]
So it does have some old roots, originally meaning 'bundle.' Then I realized there's another meaning for "ream", a much more violent meaning. If you come home and say you got "reamed" by someone, it's not good. You probably just got yelled at, but the literal meaning is to make a hole in something.
ream(v)
1. To form, shape, taper, or enlarge (a hole or bore, for example) with or as if with a reamer.
2. To remove (material) by this process.
3. To squeeze the juice out of (fruit) with a reamer.
[Possibly from Middle English remen, to make room, variant of rimen, from Old English rman; see reu- in Indo-European roots.]
Interesting. Two words, spelled and sound the same, but have very different meanings and origins.
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