Comment by amenhotep
10 days ago
Flour as you know it is not quite the same thing as meal milled at the time when the words were being invented. Wheatmeal is still a thing, look up images of it and the resemblance to oatmeal should be a lot more apparent!
I would class porridge oats as what might be called 'rolled oats' if you were buying animal feed. They are not ground, but crushed under a rolling stone. I guess they have different terms for different markets. Never seen rolled wheat, but I have seen rolled barley and oats.. they looks like porridge oats. Or is it an Atlantic divide, but with the US foodie term crossing back in the food market
Originally, "meal" was the generic word for milled grains.
Already the Mycenaean Greeks, 3500 years ago, used a cognate word with the same meaning: "meleuro-".
"Flour", which comes from "flower", originally meant the finest grade of meal, which was considered the best.
Nowadays the usage of these words is not always consistent with their original meanings.