Keep your nose to the grindstone and your shoulder to the wheel. Both these expressions, meaning to work hard, come from the flour-milling trade, an activity we’re no longer as familiar with.

In the past however, the miller was the third most important person in the village, after the lord of the manor and the priest. Without a mill, the villagers would have had to grind their own grain. This would take several hours of very hard work for just enough grain for one meal.

So all of you with Miller surnames out there are probably descended from these village bigwigs, for every village had at least one miller until the Industrial Revolution.

The miller may have been important, but he had a reputation for being dishonest, and was often said to have a golden thumb. This referred to the practice of pressing his thumb on the scales to increase the weight and therefore the price he charged.

In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer depicts the miller as a drunken rascal and refers to the magic golden thumb of the miller: “He well knew how to steal corn and take payment three times; And yet he had a thumb of gold, indeed.” An old English proverb that backs up this claim: ‘You can never tell upon whose grain the miller’s pig was fattened.’

Millstones were gradually replaced with rollers, processing flour in factories in the city, and millers had to find other employment. However, flour-milling phrases from that time have not lost their potency. To be put through the mill is to undergo an unpleasant experience (being pounded by stones!).

The opposite is calm as a millpond. The millpond was formed by damming a stream to provide water to turn a millwheel. Run-of-the-mill means ordinary or average, perhaps referring to the ungraded grain as it came out, all looking much the same. A millstone around your neck is a heavy and inescapable responsibility. The millstone was about the heaviest object anyone in a village would ever see. Grist is defined as grain for grinding. So, grist to the mill means useful material or knowledge.

Happy Puzzling!