Gramme

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ɡɹæm/

Definitions

1. This term signifies a measurement of weight commonly used in contexts such as cooking and medicine
2. A standardized unit for measuring weight that is often found in science, cooking, and health care contexts
3. A metric unit used to measure mass or weight, typically applied in scientific and everyday settings

Etymology: The gram began its life as a seed. Its ancestor in Ancient Greek, "gramma," meant a small weight, a scruple, and it is the same root that gave Greek its word for a letter of the alphabet, a sense that shows up in English as "grammar" and "program." Gramma passed into French as "gramme," which the French adopted as the name of their new metric unit of mass. The metric system was built on a deliberate plan: a unit of weight tied to a measurable quantity of water, and the gram became its small standard. Parallel to this, Portuguese once had a word "gram" that came straight from Latin "grānum," meaning a grain or seed. That Latin root is the same one behind English "corn" and "grain," so the English word for a tiny unit of weight and the word for wheat share an ancestor. The two lines met by coincidence rather than by design, which is why the metric unit and the cereal grain are doublets.

Synonyms: gram