Definition of gallon - What it is, Meaning and Concept

The concept of galon can come from two different etymological sources: French gallon or English gallon In each case, the root produces different meanings.

When gallon comes from the French language, it can refer to a tissue that is used as a tape.It is called gallon, within this framework, to a distinctive employed by members of a military force.

As a fabric, the gallon stands out for its strength.It can be made with silver and gold thread, with silk or wool, used for ornamental purposes.At the level of the armed forces, the gallons serve to visualize a grade or a range.

If gallon comes from the English language, instead, it refers to a volume unit 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 dictionary detail of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), in North America a gallon is equivalent to 3,785 liters .In Great Brittany , however the gallon equals 4,546 liters .This way you can differentiate between the international gallon (or American 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 mentions different types of volumes.A gallon of gasoline in 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, their equivalence in a common unit (such as the liter ).

If this difference in meaning can bring confusion to us, that we speak another language and if we travel to one of these two regions we would not drag so many preconceptions, imagine how much more difficult it is for an Englishman to adapt to the equivalence of a gallon in North America and vice versa.Even more interesting is that in our language we have a word with two different meanings, each with its own origin.

It should be mentioned that not only English-speaking countries use the term gallon to refer to the unit of volume previously noted, but we can also find it in those who 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 measure of volume of certain liquids, especially that of gasoline, necessary to express its 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 what quantity it was, since for each one the values ​​were different, and also influenced the place where the measure was taken.By the nineteenth century, two definitions were generalized: the gallon of British beer and the of wine .

The concept of imperial gallon emerged in Great Britain in 1824 from which it was used to measure beer at the time, and was based on the amount of 10 pounds of distilled water calculated in the air, with a value of 30 inches of 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, a total of 4546,0903 results.

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 equivalent to 230,907 inches cubic, currently its value is 231.