the.com/ration
proof that scarcity, sliced thin enough, becomes a strange kind of fairness
means A fixed allotment of something scarce—food, fuel, supplies—portioned out to each person so a limited supply can be shared rather than hoarded.
from From Latin 'ratio,' meaning reckoning, calculation, or reason—the same root that gives us 'rational' and 'ratio.' The thread is arithmetic: a ration is a reasoned portion, your share worked out by careful counting. It entered English through French 'ration' and gained its military and wartime flavor as armies and besieged cities did the grim math of feeding people on too little. So at its heart, a ration is reason applied to hunger—scarcity, divided by sums.
- war origin
- Britain rationed food until 1954, nine years after WWII
- sweet freedom
- candy rationing's end caused a 1953 sugar frenzy
- latin root
- shares ancestry with 'reason' — both mean calculation
- k-ration
- named for physiologist Ancel Keys, who designed it
- odd math
- rationing actually improved British wartime nutrition overall
british wartime ration — uk citizens received 4oz butter, 2oz tea per week during 1940-1954
siege of leningrad ration — 125g bread daily for workers in winter 1941-42, causing mass starvation
us military mre — meal ready to eat issued to soldiers since 1981, replaced c-rations