Size - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

SIZE, a general term for bulk or quantity; also an agglutinant consisting of undried glue. The two words, though they are so widely separate in meaning, are by etymology the same. "Size" (Lat. assidere, to sit down to) is a shortened form of "assize," through the French and Italian respectively. The O. Fr. assis, assise, and Eng. "assize," meant a sitting of a deliberative or other body; hence decree, ordinance of such a body, specifically of such as regulated weights, measures, prices; thus it came to mean a standard of measure price, quantity thus fixed, and so merely quantity or measure, in which sense it remains in the shortened form "size." In the sense of an agglutinant, "size" is an adaptation of Ital. sisa, a shortened form of assisa (Lat. assidere), and seems to have meant by derivation "that which painters use to make the colours sit well or suitably."