winnow

If you’re one of the many (including me) people who’ve read the adult fairy-tale series (and by ‘adult fairy-tale’ I mean dirty, dirty soft porn) ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ by Sarah J Maas, you’ll be very familiar with the verb ‘to winnow’. It’s not filthy, sorry. In the books, winnowing is the ability to transport yourself to a different location using magic. Only some of the Fae in the series can do it, as it takes lots of concentration and strength.

Winnow is a real word, although it doesn’t have anything to do with teleportation. If one of us non-Fae folk winnows, it’s much more mundane, I’m afraid – it means we’re separating grain from chaff using a current of air. That’s a fancy way of saying that you chuck it in the air and let the wind do the hard work, blowing away the lighter chaff while the heavier grain falls back down.

Figuratively, ‘winnow’ can also mean to separate the valuable or desirable part of something from the crap bit, or to sift through and choose stuff that’s useful or valuable. So it’s basically a much quicker way of saying ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’.

‘Winnow’ has its origins in Old English and Old High German. The Old English verb ‘windwian’ meant ‘to fan’ or ‘to blow’. That’s related to the Old High German word ‘winnan’, which means the same. And that word has roots in Proto-Germanic and ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *wē- or *weh- which means ‘to blow, to move air’. So it’s actually a pretty good verb for a fictional process that involves moving yourself through the air really fast.

PS I realise I sounded a bit snobby when I referred to ACOTAR as ‘dirty, dirty soft porn’. I didn’t mean to – I actually really enjoyed all of them, and leant them to both my mum and my sister (is that weird?). I’m not alone either. The series has sold over 13 million copies, is a New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for a TV series adaptation. (They are super filthy though – especially ‘A Court of Silver Flames’. So if you decide to read them, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Apparently this is a ‘book trailer’. I didn’t know this is a thing, but I’m here for it.

grist

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘to add grist to the mill’, meaning to use something to your advantage e.g. ‘his utter stupidity really added grist to the mill’. But what exactly is grist? And why are you adding it to your mill? Well, it turns out that it’s a pretty literal metaphor – grist is simply grain that’s ground into flour and a mill is, well, you know what a mill is.

A mill, obviously

The earliest known use of the phrase in the metaphorical sense is in a work by an English theologian and reformer called John Foxe, who wrote in 1570: ‘All these are as grist to the mill to the papists.’ You might be able to guess from this that Foxe was a protestant, having converted from Catholicism. If I were a cynic, I might think that some of the reason for this was because he was due to take Catholic holy orders after his academic career ended, which of course meant giving up all action in the trouser department. He went on to have six kids, so it was lucky for them he did convert. Although Wikipedia describes him as ‘so bookish that he ruined his health by his persistent study’, so I’m very impressed he found the time. He also wrote an enormous (1,800 pages no less) history of Christian martyrs and their persecution and suffering, which became a popular and influential work during the Protestant Reformation, so maybe it wasn’t all about the winkie.

Anyway, back to ‘grist’. It comes from the Old English word, ahem, ‘grīst’, which also means ‘ground grain’. Not much of an etymological leap there then. That comes from the Old High German word ‘grist’ (again), the Middle Low German word ‘grêst’ (we’re mixing it up now) and the Old Norse word ‘grysta’ (woop woop), all of which mean, you’ve guessed it, ‘ground grain’. ‘Grist’ is also where we get ‘grind’ from. (Are you still awake?)

We’ve been using the word ‘grist’ in English since at least the 9th century to refer to both the grain brought to a mill for grinding, and the ground flour itself (which seems confusing to me, so lucky I’m not a miller).