The Etymology of Volume
Volume began as something you could hold in your hand and unroll.βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ Latin volumen, from volvere ('to roll'), was the standard word for a papyrus scroll β what we would call a book. When codices replaced scrolls in the third and fourth centuries, the word transferred to bound volumes, but the rolling origin survives in the idea of a multi-volume work: each 'volume' corresponds to what would once have been a separate scroll. The expansion to physical bulk came in the sixteenth century. If a scroll's length measured its content, then an object's three-dimensional extent could be its 'volume' too. Mathematicians formalised this into cubic measurement. The acoustic sense β loudness β arrived last, in the late 1800s, treating the fullness of a sound as analogous to physical bulk. The same root, *welH- ('to turn'), produced revolve, evolve, involve, and the seemingly unrelated waltz, which entered English from German walzen ('to roll, to dance').