Name: English Tutor Nick P Word Origins (84) Average
Uploaded: 2019-11-04T02:19:24.000Z
Duration: 3 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi this Tutor Nick P and  this is Word Origins 84. The  word origin today is average.

Okay. Let's take a look at the note here.  Today the word average simply refers to

Gerund

adding up several numbers and then dividing the total by the number of

things added together. Yeah. So it's pretty simple.

Let's continue. The origin of the word average comes out of the Middle Ages and

was similar to the idea of what we would call insurance or at least call insurance

today,  especially insurance on shipped goods. Back in the Middle Ages shipping

was the main way of transporting goods.  Really the only way,  from one country to

another. And there was a lot of loss due to accidents,  ships lost at sea from

storms,  pirates etc.  or who knows maybe something else moving around you know,

you don't know if any crew stole anything. In order to keep the business

of commerce and trade going,  a charge above the shipping had to be made. Okay.

This charge was paid to the owners of the goods or the ship .  Yeah or like

the ship or the ship captain.  I guess for taking care of the goods and any loss or

damage of the goods through transport or maybe the shipping company. Different

versions of this word could be found in several languages such as ...  I hope I'm

pronouncing these right.  Avarie maybe in French, avaria  in Italian and or averia

or averia in Spanish. Some believe it may have derived from awariya.

okay in Arabic. All of these words have to do with damage to the ships or goods

in order to keep commerce operating in a fair way. They had to make this charge in

which all parties,  all groups...  so if you know the producer of the goods , or if

there was a middleman for trade,  the shipping company itself and maybe on the

other side whoever the merchants the goods were going to. All parties had to

average out the cost and share in any losses. Yeah. Because of only one side or

just one group is taking the losses. It won't work. Nobody will want to

participate in this. Therefore an average cost was determined for all to pay and

our modern word of average was born. So this is where average came from. So it

actually came from shipping and it really had more to do with something

like you know,  like I said what we would call today kind of an insurance or

insurance policy. Okay. Anyway,  I hope you got it. I

hope it was clear. I hope it was informative.  Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

English Tutor Nick P Word Origins (84) Average

determine

average

pronounce

divide