battery

battery
\ \ [16] The original meaning of battery in English was literally ‘hitting’, as in assault and battery. It came from Old French batterie, a derivative of batre, battrebeat’ (from which English also gets batter [14]). The ultimate source of this, and of English battle, was Latin battuerebeat’. The development of the word’s modern diversity of senses was via ‘bombardment by artillery’, to ‘unit of artillery’, to ‘electric cell’: it seems that this last meaning was inspired by the notion of ‘discharge of electricity’ rather than ‘connected series of cells’.
\ \ Cf.BATTER, BATTLE

Word origins - 2ed. . 2005.

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