Transcript of “”Cord” of Wood”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is David. I’m calling from Plymouth, Wisconsin.
Hi, David. Welcome to the program.
So, you know, we live in the country and we burn wood for heat in our house.
And we’ve been curious about this form of measurement that everyone uses to measure firewood.
And it’s a cord. I think it’s spelled C-O-R-D, but maybe it’s C-H-O-R-D. I’m not sure.
And just wondering kind of where that term comes from.
If other countries use the same thing, you know, is it kind of like metric and imperial or whatever?
And how does that work?
Oh, interesting.
Well, first of all, it is spelled C-O-R-D.
It’s that kind of chord.
And it’s a term that goes back to the 17th century.
And it has to do with firewood that you stack neatly and tightly until it’s measuring eight feet long, four feet in height, and four feet wide.
That’s the measurement.
That’s a cord.
And it was simply called that because it was measured with a cord of rope that had that, you know, if you wrapped it around there, it would be that measurement.
Oh, so initially it was actually a measurement of a length of cord or a length of rope.
Oh, okay.
And there’s two reasons that you would want to measure your wood.
One is you know approximately what your burn rate is over the winter,
So you know how much wood to stack up in the fall before the cold weather really sets in.
And then, of course, sometimes you sell your wood,
So you need to have a way to measure it so that the person knows what they’re getting.
Indeed, yeah, yeah.
And is that kind of a European thing, the length of rope that originated with that measurement?
That’s a really good question.
I don’t know offhand. I would bet that there’s something analogous. I don’t know. Do you know, Grant?
I don’t know, but I know that this comes to us from the United Kingdom, and it’s very old in its usage.
400 years, at least, people have been talking about cords of wood in English.
Okay. Cool. All right.
All right. Well, thanks for taking some time out of your dag. We’ll talk to you later.
All right. Yeah. Thank you, too. Bye-bye.
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