How did a "ton" come to mean "one hundred" of something?
The etymology of "ton" is described by the OED as derived from French meaning "cask."
In origin the same word as tun n.1 (Old English tunne, Old French tonne) a cask. In Middle English this was commonly spelt, as in French, tonne; in 16–17th cent., more often tun; from c1688 the two spellings have been differentiated, tun being appropriated to the sense ‘cask’ and the liquid measure, and ton to the senses here treated, which, it will be seen, are partly measures, and partly weights
My question is essentially how a word with this origin came to have a colloquial meaning referring to one hundred of something, such as in OED definitions referring to 100 points in cricket or darts, or 100 pounds in money. The variants of this meaning are first attested from 1936 - 1962, where the 1962 attestation is the first under the definition:
In other miscellaneous colloq. uses to denote one hundred.
A ton can refer to a whole lot of different measurements, many of which are outlined on its Wikipedia page, and some of which are formally defined in the OED as well.
The second definition given in the OED (after "cask") mentions one meaning specifically referring to "100 cubic feet," so to some extent I wonder if the meanings referring to 100 in colloquial use in the 20th century have some relationship to the meaning referring to 100 cubic feet.
- A unit used in measuring the carrying capacity or burden of a ship, the amount of cargo, freight, etc. Originally, the space occupied by a tun cask of wine (see explanatory quot. 1894 on tight adj. and quot. 1539 here). Now, for the purposes of registered tonnage, the space of 100 cubic feet. For purposes of freight, usually the space of 40 cubic feet, unless that bulk would weigh more than 20 cwt., in which case freight is charged by weight. But the expression ‘ton of cargo’ is also used with regard to special packages which are conventionally assumed as going so many packages to the ton. Cf. also tonnage n.
This definition has attestations ranging from 1379 - 1867. The OED doesn't draw a direct connection between "Now... the space of 100 cubic feet" and the other definitions that refer to 100. Are they related, or is there a separate etymology for the later uses of "ton" referring to 100?
Solution 1:
Speaking from my reasonably intact memory of the 1960s, we reserved the word ton for 100mph (outside of its proper meaning as 20cwt or 112lbs). If Fred had coaxed his Norton motor cycle to travel at 100mph along our first motorway (freeway), you might have heard some awestruck witness exclaim, "Blimey! Last night, Fred did a ton up the M1 on his Norton!" but otherwise, the British usage of the word, to mean £100 or in other non-standard contexts, was pretty much restricted to London and was rarely encountered in the rest of our green and pleasant land.
Solution 2:
The sources below, including The Patridge Dictionary of Slang, cite as first slang usage of ton meaning one hundred the amount of £100 from the first decades of the 20th century. From there, ton was applied to different contexts with the meaning of 100 (miles per hour, cricket etc.). The original usage of ton referring to £100 appears to be from Cockney Rhyming Slang, a word construction which relied both on phonetic but also on semantic links between words “in which case the person coining the slang term sees a semantic link, sometimes jocular, between the Cockney expression and its referent”.
£100 at that time were certainly “a large amount (tons)” of money and this possible semantic link with the “100 cubic feet” usage might have found its way into common speech.
From World Wide Words:
A ton is £100 (half a ton being therefore £50). This relates to a common usage in a number of contexts, for example, to do a ton is to achieve a speed of 100 miles per hour and in darts or cricket a ton is a score of 100. This is familiar enough not to seem an odd usage, even though ton is most commonly met with as a largish unit of weight.
Actually, all down its history it has been a measure of volume as well as weight, perhaps not surprisingly so because the word comes from tun, the name of a type of wine cask, which could be treated as either. For example, the registered capacity of a ship is measured in volume units, not weight, in which a ton is taken to be 100 cubic feet (this is probably the origin of ton meaning 100, but nobody seems to know for sure).
Also the Green’s Dictionary of Slang appears to support this assumption:
ton n.1
[SE ton, 100 cubic feet]
- [late 18C+] a very large (unspecified) amount; thus tons n.
- [late 19C; 1940s+] £100.
- [1950s+] 100 miles per hour; usu. as do a ton v., to drive at that speed.
- [1960s+] any unit of 100, e.g. 100 years, 100 runs (in cricket).