Talk:average

The etymology of the word "average" is correct up to the Italian "avaria" but beyond that it goes wrong. The ancient Greek term "αβαρία" (abaria) as used in navigation, was the reduction of weght, load, burden, cargo of a boat, by throwing some of it overboard, in order to save the rest of the cargo. This could be necessitated in the case of rough seas or damage to the boat. The value of the items thrown into the sea, was shared amongst those whose cargo was spared. The Greek word is composite of the privative "a" and the word "baros" meaning weight, load, cargo. (The word baros is used in the word "barometer"). The term "avaria" is  in continuous use from antiquity to modern day Greek language in exactly the same context. The pronunciation of the letter "b" as "v" is a phenomenon of  the post Alexandrine era. Thus the word "abaria" was pronounced by the Byzantines, (the chief maritime force in the Mediterranean) as "avaria" and that is how it was accepted into both Italian and Arabic. The apportioning  of any  loss due to "avaria" was carried out on the basis the value of the cargo that survived,  which entailed the finding of a factor  for the calculations. This was the "average".

RFV discussion: March 2016–January 2018
French section. Needs cleanup and formatting if OK. SemperBlotto (talk) 14:14, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It's remarkably hard to cite because of the number of hits for the English word 'average'. But if you follow the links (copy and paste as they are unformatted links) there are two citations for the word 'average' already in the entry. http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/average provides adequate information to cite it in Old and Middle French. http://www.anglo-norman.net/D/average confirms it just refers to our definition #7 of average. Personally I'd just detag it. Renard Migrant (talk) 20:08, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Except it's a French entry, not Old French or Middle French. Two cites won't do for modern French, especially since only one is a use, as far as I can tell. There's also the issue of whether any usage that could be construed as modern French might be construed instead as Norman. This can all be cleared up, but the entry as currently written appears to be wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:36, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * English definition 7 must belong to a different etymology. DCDuring TALK 00:28, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, it does. I've split the English entry into two etymologies based on the Middle English Dictionary and on the Bosworth/Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. You may notice that it's the result of Norman Old French derivational morphology used on a word of Old English origin, so it's a bit hard to pin down exactly what the language was (which is normal for that time and place, I guess). Chuck Entz (talk) 01:39, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I checked the SOED (1993) which links that sense to Medieval Latin and the other senses to what we have in the entry. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:15, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * You'll notice in the MED entry I linked to that it gives the origin as both "AF and AL". I suspect the Anglo-Latin has pretty much the same origin as the Anglo-Norman, or is from the Anglo-Norman. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:56, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

     

This is too damn easy. -- Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 14:37, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is, but that can be remedied: those are all cites of an arithmetic sense, equivalent to what's now Etymology 1 of the English. It looks like that should be added. The rfved sense is equivalent to what was definition #7 and is now Etymology 2. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:56, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * And it gets even more complicated: see the footnote on the last cite. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:07, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * In ... statuts et coustumes..., suggestion 1 by Romanophile, the section title includes "Des pasturage ..." and in Annales du Midi, suggestion 6 by Romanophile, "de donner à mégerie et cantal de l'average des boeufs, juments, asnesses et autres bestiaux" both seem to describe types of rent from tenants to seigneurs.
 * In Droit anglais..., suggestion 3 by Romanophile, the section title is "De Le Moyenne (average)" and looks to me like a French explanation of the English term. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 22:48, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

     -- Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 23:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The footnote I referred to earlier: "on entend par averagi les brebis en général et le droit de pâture en certains lieux". Since the word footnoted is average, I think "averagi" is an error for that word. At any rate, it looks like the uses in Provence, at least, refer to grazing animals and some sort of right to pasturage for those animals. That means the first and last of your first batch (the rest are the arithmetic sense), and all of your second batch.
 * It looks like there really is a French word, but all the original cites which use the rfved sense are mostly something to the effect of "this is what they used to call it in England", which look like mentions to me, and all of your cites are for other senses not found in the entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:08, 14 March 2016 (UTC)


 * RFV-failed at this time. Please re-add if you can find citations. - -sche (discuss) 23:23, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Derived terms in marine law, from Chambers 1908
(There seems to be a scanno in here, or two sentences run together.) "petty average: any loss or damage to ship or cargo from unavoidable accidental causes particular average. Again, general average is the apportionment of loss caused by measures taken for the ship's safety, as cutting away the masts, throwing overboard cargo, accepting towage, or the like." Equinox ◑ 01:09, 14 June 2019 (UTC)