Dry Measure
Dry measures are units of volume used to measure bulk commodities which are not gas or liquid. They are typically used in agriculture, agronomy, and commodity markets to measure grain, dried beans, and dried and fresh fruit (e.g. a peck of apples is a retail unit); formerly also salt pork and fish. They are also used in fishing for clams, crabs, etc. and formerly for many other substances (e.g. coal, cement, lime) which were typically shipped and delivered in a standardized container such as a barrel.
They are often confused or conflated with units of mass, assuming a nominal density, and indeed many units nominally of dry measure have become standardized as units of mass (see bushel).
Read more about Dry Measure: Metric Units, Imperial and U.S. Customary Units, Struck and Heaped Measurement
Famous quotes containing the words dry and/or measure:
“The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections. I trust the measure will turn out well. It is a great relief to me. Defeat in this way, after a full and public hearing before this [Electoral] Commission, is not mortifying in any degree, and success will be in all respects more satisfactory.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)