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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Where did "run of the mill" originate? Funny how it's similar to "run of the house" but means something completely different. Is "mill" referring to the machine itself, rather than the building? How does an object typically look after it's been run through a mill? (well, besides the obvious... "typical".) Do mills make things flat?
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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pure speculation... but there are certain food that need to be pure-- (the flat bread used as eucharist) some mill would be set up with 2 or more sets of grindstones (grinstens)and could seperately grind two different grains.. but small mills would only have one set, and would grind wheat, till it ran out, and then grind corn.. and between the two "runs" there would be corn flour, contanimated with some bits of wheat. (this would be run of mill.. ) flour for special food would not be run of the mill...
secondly, as a farmer, you might sell some of your crop to miller as fee for grinding you wheat.. and the wheat you sold the miller was mix with all the other wheat collected... so run of the mill is common, and not pure or perfect... (your wheat would be run through the mill all at one go.. )-- we don't often think about it, but there are many varieties of wheat.. some are soft (cake flours) and some are hard (bread flour) run of the mill would be close to "all purpose " flour.
and mills came in all kinds.. (mechanically; water, tidal, wind) and all sorts of things got milled.. a saw mill (power tools for cutting woods) a flour mill (the kind we most often think of) a steel mil-(would operate bellows, and power hammers; to turn charcoal (pure carbon) and iron into steel-- an alloy) Paper was milled too.. with the mill powering big mallets, to beat the fibers into a slurry for paper), water mills, (either to pump swamps/low lands driy, or to pump water from a deep well) tobacco mills (for grinding tobacco into snuff!) and finally, "mills" as in New England Mills-- power looms for weaving many of these products are still produced in mills... but most mills now are electrically powered.
i think mills refers to a building that houses machinery for transforming power.. (water power become mechanical power.. and in later days, electrical power becomes mechanical..)
rolling mills make things flat (oats come to mind) but mills are great peices of technology-- and could do many things...
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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To me "run of the mill" meant something was just average in quality. Here is what Quinion had to say:
nother phrase he mentioned that sounds as though it originates in the corn
mill is run of the mill, meaning 'undistinguished; ordinary, average',
perhaps referring to the ungraded output of the grinding process. But as the
miller ground in batches whatever came to him and gave the resulting flour
back to his customer, there was normally no question of separating it by
quality. In fact, the expression is modern (OED2's first citation is dated
1909), and it seems to refer to the unsorted output from a textile mill.
Another form of about the same date was run of the mine, with a similar
sense concerning ore.
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Joined: Nov 2000
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old hand
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old hand
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Whilst it's possible that the saying does have roots into the weaving and/or grain processing industries, it has a strong and definite relationship with the mining and mineral processing sector. I'm pretty sure the term in this sense was developed and exported to the colonies by Cornish miners.
There wouldn't be an operating (non-coal) mine in Australia that didn't have a ROM stockpile. In this case however, the acronym stands for 'run of mine' and it refers to ore grade material awaiting processing. Once ROM material (also referred to as ore feed) is loaded into the mill for processing it becomes ROM - ie run of mill. I'm not sure about coal mines but, because coal typically doesn't get processed before it becomes useful, I can't see why a coal mine would have a ROM stockpile.
Processing circuits are generally designed to process ROM material that conforms to a narrow range of parameters such as ore grade, viscosity, hardness, SG, particle size etc. Thus the material being processed generally looks, smells, feels and behaves the same over long periods of time - to ensure a continuity of product. Any variations in ore out of the mine itself (ie the hole in the ground) are compensated for by blending different material types in the processing circuit. Thus, a mill configured to process soft, low grade ROM material would need to blend hard, high grade ore with lots of soft low grade material to ensure the balance between material in, reagent and energy consumption - and product out. Blending strategies are very important on all mine sites - including coal mines (some customers will want low ash content and/or low sulfur content etc)
The terminology would translate across all milling operations, regardless of the product.
stales
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Cool, stales--thanks. What's a reagent do, please?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Nice one, stales! Your explanation sounds very reasonable, although I had been led to believe that it came from the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile mills. Most mills would produce just one type of cloth, and the looms would be set up to produce just that. If there was an order for something special and different, a loom or looms would have to be set up differently. So the usual product was what was normally set up to "run" through the mill. A special cloth might well be referred to as, "This stuff an't jus' t'roon o't mill, lad!" And a reagent, Jackie, is something that reacts with other things - often an acid or alkali, I think (Rhuby, GCE "O" Level Chemistry [failed]) 
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old hand
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old hand
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> "run" through the mill
Rather than your spin on the word "run", I think it may be easier to think of a "production run" - which is what you've described most effectively. Thanks for the hand on this one.
stales
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old hand
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old hand
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In mineral processing parlance, a reagent is any chemical used in the extraction process. Typically examples would be cyanide, caustic soda, viscosity modifiers, various acids and a whole range of things which alter the flotation characteristics of the slurry.
stales
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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About a year ago, needing to understand details of the construction and technology of water mills in days when they were the chief source of power, I found to my surprise that there is almost nothing available on the subject. The only source I could find was a children's book, Mill by MacCauley.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Just adding to the working list:
Gin mills (some sort of flattening process going on here...where's that fuzzled thread when ya' need it?)
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