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:
“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)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)