Grist is
grain
A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legum ...
that has been separated from its
chaff
Chaff (; ) is the dry, scaly protective casing of the seeds of cereal grains or similar fine, dry, scaly plant material (such as scaly parts of flowers or finely chopped straw). Chaff is indigestible by humans, but livestock can eat it. In agri ...
in preparation for
grinding. It can also mean grain that has been ground at a
gristmill. Its
etymology derives from the verb ''grind.''
Grist can be ground into
meal or
flour
Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains, roots, beans, nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many culture ...
, depending on how coarsely it is ground.
Maize made into grist is called
grits when it is coarse, and
corn meal when it is finely ground.
Wheat,
oats,
barley, and
buckwheat are also ground and sifted into flour and
farina. Grist is also used in
brewing
Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and #Fermenting, fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with Yeast#Beer, yeast. It may be done in a brewery ...
and
distillation to make a
mash.
"Grist for the mill"
The
proverb "all is grist for the mill" means "everything can be made useful, or be a source of profit." There are some minor variations, such as "all's grist that comes to his mill", meaning that the person in question can make something positive out of anything that comes along.
A
miller ground whatever grain was brought to him, and charged a portion of the final product for the service. Therefore, all grain arriving at the mill represented income, regardless of its quality. The first recorded usage was in the 16th century, but the term is probably much older. The term "
gristmill" was once common in the
United States and
Britain to describe a small mill open to all comers.
References
*Quinion Michael (4 July 1996)
The Miller's Tale.via World Wide Words.
Cereals
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