What Does gallon Mean
The concept of gallon can come from two different etymological sources: the French gallon or the English gallon . In each case, the root gives rise to different meanings.
When gallon comes from the French language, it can refer to a fabric that is used as a ribbon. A gallon is called, in this framework, a badge used by members of a military force.
As a fabric, the chevron stands out for its strength. It can be made with silver and gold thread, with silk or wool, being used for ornamental purposes. At the military level, chevrons are used to display a grade or rank .
If gallon comes from the English language, instead, it refers to a unit of volume used in English-speaking nations and in several Latin American countries (such as Nicaragua and Panama , among others). The gallon refers to the volume of a liquid, usually fuel, wine, or beer.
According to the details of the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), in North America a gallon is equivalent to 3,785 liters . In Great Britain , on the other hand, a gallon equals 4,546 liters . In this way you can differentiate between the international gallon (or US gallon ) and the imperial gallon (or British gallon ).
It is clear that talking about gallons in general is confusing, since depending on the region the expression refers to different types of volumes. A gallon of gasoline in the United States does not have the same volume as a gallon of beer in England , for example. That is why it is important to know, in each case, its equivalence in a common unit (such as the liter ).
If this difference in its meaning can bring confusion to us, who speak another language and if we traveled to one of these two regions we would not drag so many preconceptions, let's imagine how much more difficult it is for an Englishman to adapt to the equivalent of a gallon in North America and vice versa. . It is even more interesting that in our language we have a word with two such different meanings, each with its own origin .
It should be mentioned that not only do English-speaking countries use the term gallon to refer to the unit of volume mentioned above, but we can also find it in those that are influenced by them, such as the following: Nicaragua, Panama, Liberia, Honduras , Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala. In all of them, the most normal use of this word is reserved to the volume measurement of certain liquids, especially gasoline, necessary to express their price .
As a curious fact, we must indicate that in ancient times it was not enough to know the number of gallons of a certain product to know how much it was, since for each one the values were different, and the place where it was taken also influenced measure. By the 19th century, two definitions became general: the British beer gallon and the wine gallon .
The concept of the imperial gallon arose in Great Britain in 1824 from the one used to measure beer at that time, and was based on the amount of 10 pounds of distilled water calculated in the air, with a value of 30 inches barometric pressure mercury and a temperature of 16,667 degrees Celsius. Expressed in cubic inches, the volume of the imperial gallon equals 277.41945; In cubic centimeters, on the other hand, it is a total of 4546.0903.
In the United States they had already assigned another value to the gallon unit, which was based on the measurement of the wine in a cylinder 7 inches in diameter and 6 inches long. While at that time the American gallon was equal to 230.907 cubic inches, today its value is 231.