Word History of Battery – from Bowls to Cannon and Ben Franklin

Hello,

The next time you change the battery in your kitchen clock, or a child’s toy, spare a thought for its long history.

In Middle English we had the noun bateri but it was for forged metal-ware. I’m thinking of metal mixing bowls in the kitchen but it could have covered a multitude.

Old French had the word baterie (a beating or thrashing) by the 1100s thanks to the verb batre (to beat) and ultimately from Latin battuere (to batter). That’s where English acquired battery in the 1530s as the idea of battering somebody. It arrived in a legal sense and we still have charge of battery on the statute books today.

The meaning evolved over time from one person hitting another, to one army hitting another. First, battery was to rain heavy blows on city walls or a fort, and then it became the name of the artillery doing the bombardment. A battery was an artillery unit by the 1550s in English. At this point the battery rested for a while. Recharging perhaps?

That’s was until Ben Franklin used the term to name an electrical cell in 1748. This was possibly because of the idea of discharging electricity in the same way a cannon discharged a ball at the enemy. Either way, it stuck and nowadays we’re more likely to be speaking about small energy cells than cannon when we refer to a battery.

One odd use, which didn’t stick, was in baseball where a battery was the term in the late 1800s for a pitcher, or the pitcher and the catcher unit.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling with plenty of battery energy,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)