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Tsuwm, I might get angrified. I doubt that I would get
angryfied. But your 'orignal sense' #1. brings up an interesting concept.
1. The amount of wine or other liquor by which a cask or bottle falls short of being quite full (originally the quantity required to make good the loss by leakage or absorption).
Now, the part in the parentheses restates the first section, in a rather significant way. Because the first section, which can stand alone, is actually a definition of
something that isn't there! It does not refer to
"the amount of space" or "the amount of gas"--it refers to something that is absent. Quite intriguing, when you think about it.
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My dictionary says ullage is the amount by which a container, esp. of liquid, falls short of being full.
So ullage is the shortage, not what is left.
As so often happens with technical terms, idiots
get them backwards, and get into print.
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My dictionary says ullage is the amount by which a container, esp. of liquid, falls short of being full.
So ullage is the shortage, not what is left.
And yet the OED offers it as valid - sorry, Bill, but you'll have a tough time winning this one. 
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Dear Max: "F-word" the OED. I wish Bobyoungbalt were with us, because he is in the business of buying merchandise from overseas, apparently. He would know how to check that "ullage" is a legal term, used in contracts to guarantee that the buyer gets what he paid for. If you bought a thousand barrels of wine, with a guaranteed ullage of no more than one quart per barrel, and received a shipment of a thousand barrels with only a quart in each, I believe you would be sufficiently annoyed to sue, and I believe, readily win the suit.
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Whoa, now, boys; how 'bout a deep breath or two? I am
sticking my nose in without a paddle (gee I hope that made you smile ), because I've not come across this word before,
but going by the quotations, it looks to me like 'ullage'
can be used to mean both: the amount that is there,
AND the amount that isn't. Witness:
The quantity of liquor contained in a cask partially filled and the capacity of the portion which is empty are termed respectively the wet and dry ullage.
So, perhaps users of this word need to be specific.
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And, here, all the time I thought "dregs" was the proper word for the sediment left over in the bottom of a wine glass or the bottom of a cask or bottle. In a fancy restaurant I've heard the sediment in a glass called the "lees." And quite properly I thought!
Silly me!
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, it looks to me like 'ullage'
can be used to mean both: the amount that is there,
AND the amount that isn't. My point exactly. I was not trying to provoke Dr. Bill, I was simply unaware that he would object so vigorously to the idea that the word in question might have more than one meaning. 
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>The quantity of liquor contained in a cask partially filled and the capacity of the portion which is empty are termed respectively the wet and dry ullage. well, imagine that... a word which is its own opposite!? hey jojo!! but on a less serious note, here's what Norman Schur ("1000 Most Challenging Words") has to say: Ullage is used of a bottle of wine part of which has been lost by evaporation. In England, ullage was formerly used as a slang term for "dregs" and even more generally, "rubbish".One might, then, refer to this whole thread as ullage.
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Dear Max: I was irritated only at the stupidity of the people who inverted the meaning to no good purpose.
I guess the only solution would be when contracting to buy wine by the barrel to define "ullage" in the contract.
"One might, then, refer to this whole thread as ullage"
Tell that to Wordsmith.
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I was irritated only at the stupidity of the people who inverted the meaning to no good purpose.It's like the say, Bill, "shift happens"! 
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