Origin
The word perch is from the French perche, derived from the Latin pertica, meaning a pole or staff. Originating in Roman antiquity, it spread with the Roman Empire and was likely re-introduced to England with the Norman Conquest of 1066. In the Roman Empire, France and England, it also could mean area (square perches), and among operative masons of the Middle Ages, volume.
Read more about this topic: Perch (unit)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)