A very cold morning. Thermometer, or mercury, 18° below zero.
Varro says that gluma seems to be a glubendo because the grain is shelled from its follicle (deglubitur). Arista, the beard of grain, is so called because it dries first (quod arescit prima). The grain, granum, is a gerendo, for this is the object of planting, that this may be borne. “But the spica (or ear), which the rustics call speca, as they have received it from their forefathers, seems to be named from spes (hope), since they plant because they hope that this will be hereafter (eam enim quod sperant fore).”
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travellers, a trivial or quadrivial place. It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs. It is from the Latin villa, which, together with via (a way), or more anciently vea and vella, Varro derives from veho (to carry), because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried. The steward or overseer of the villa was a vilicus, and those who got their living by teaming (?) (vecturis) were said vellaturam facere. And whence the Latin vilis and our word(?). The inhabitants are way-worn by the travel that goes by and over them without travelling themselves.
