Batteries Not Included

I'm always interested in how one word can have such different meanings. The word battery, for example, can be applied to confined hens, a violent assault (in the US, the crime is 'assault and battery') and a power source. I decided to find out how these were all connected.

Battery was first recorded in English in 1531 and literally meant 'the action of battering', from the Latin meaning 'to beat'.

Since one could receive a beating not only from someone else's hands but also from their weapons, the word extended to a cannon attack.

From this, the place where cannons were set up was called a battery. Because it was often a group of cannons working together that gave the battering, the word battery took on a sort of collective meaning. Hence we get our eggs from battery hens because they are all cooped up together. So battery has a sense of a collection or gathering of things.

Nobody is certain why Benjamin Franklin chose the term battery for the electric cell in 1748, but it is believed he was thinking in terms of 'discharges' of electricity.