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scale: scale: English has three separate words scale. The oldest, ‘pan of a balance’ [13], was borrowed from Old Norse skál ‘bowl, drinking cup’ (ancestor of Swedish skåal, from which English gets the toast skol [16]). This was descended from a Germanic base *skal-, *skel-, *skul-, denoting ‘split, divide, peel’, which also produced English scalp, shell, shelter, shield, skill, probably skull, and also scale ‘external plate on fish, etc’ [14].

This second scale was borrowed from Old French escale, which itself was acquired from prehistoric Germanic *skalō – another derivative of *skal-. Its modern German descendant, schale, is the probable source of English shale [18]. The third scale, which originally meant ‘ladder’ [15], came from Latin scāla ‘ladder’, a descendant of the same base as Latin scandere ‘climb’, from which English gets ascend, descend, scan, and scandal. (In modern French scāla has evolved to échelle, whose derivative échelon has given English echelon [18].) The modern meanings of the word, variations on the theme ‘system of graduations used for measuring’, are metaphorical extensions of the original ‘ladder, steps’.

Its use as a verb, meaning ‘climb’, goes back to the medieval Latin derivative scālāre.
=> scalp, shell, shelter, shield, skill, skol, skull; shale; ascend, descend, echelon, scan, scandal
calabash (n.): 1590s, "dried, hollowed gourd used as a drinking cup," from Spanish calabaza, possibly from Arabic qar'a yabisa "dry gourd," from Persian kharabuz, used of various large melons; or from a pre-Roman Iberian *calapaccia.
calyx (n.): 1680s, from Latin calyx, from Greek kalyx "seed pod, husk, outer covering" (of a fruit, flower bud, etc.), from root of kalyptein "to cover, conceal" (see cell). The proper plural is calyces. Some sources connect the word rather with Greek kylix "drinking cup."
carafe (n.): 1786, from French carafe (17c.), from Italian caraffa (or Spanish garrafa), probably from Arabic gharraf "drinking cup," or Persian qarabah "a large flagon."
caucus (n.): "private meeting of party leaders," 1763, American English (New England), perhaps from an Algonquian word caucauasu "counselor, elder, adviser" in the dialect of Virginia, or from the Caucus Club of Boston, a 1760s social & political club whose name possibly derived from Modern Greek kaukos "drinking cup." Another old guess is caulker's (meeting) [Pickering, 1816], but OED finds this dismissable.
caucus: "This noun is used throughout the United States, as a cant term for those meetings, which are held by the different political parties, for the purpose of agreeing upon candidates for office, or concerting any measure, which they intend to carry at the subsequent public, or town meetings." [John Pickering, "A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America," Boston, 1816]

The word caucus, and its derivative caucusing, are often used in Boston. The last answers much to what we stile parliamenteering or electioneering. All my repeated applications to different gentlemen have not furnished me with a satisfactory account of the origin of caucus. It seems to mean, a number of persons, whether more or less, met together to consult upon adopting and prosecuting some scheme of policy, for carrying a favorite point. [William Gordon, "History, Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America," London, 1788]
chalice (n.): early 14c., from Anglo-French chalice, from Old French chalice, collateral form of calice (Modern French calice), from Latin calicem (nominative calix) "cup," cognate with Greek kylix "cup, drinking cup, cup of a flower," from PIE root *kal- (1) "cup." Ousted Old English cognate cælic, an ecclesiastical borrowing of the Latin word, and earlier Middle English caliz, from Old North French.
cymbal (n.): from Old English cimbal and from Old French cymbale (13c.), both from Latin cymbalum, from Greek kymbalon "a cymbal," from kymbe "bowl, drinking cup."
pot (n.1): "vessel," from late Old English pott and Old French pot "pot, container, mortar" (also in erotic senses), both from a general Low Germanic (Old Frisian pott, Middle Dutch pot) and Romanic word from Vulgar Latin *pottus, of uncertain origin, said by Barnhart and OED to be unconnected to Late Latin potus "drinking cup." Celtic forms are said to be borrowed from English and French.

Slang meaning "large sum of money staked on a bet" is attested from 1823. Pot roast is from 1881; phrase go to pot (16c.) suggests cooking. In phrases, the pot calls the kettle black-arse is from c. 1700; shit or get off the pot is traced by Partridge to Canadian armed forces in World War II.
scale (n.1): "skin plates on fish or snakes," c. 1300, from Old French escale "cup, scale, shell pod, husk" (12c., Modern French écale) "scale, husk," from Frankish *skala or some other Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic *skælo "split, divide" (cognates: Dutch schaal "a scale, husk," Old High German scala "shell," Gothic skalja "tile," Old English scealu "shell, husk"), from PIE root *(s)kel- (1) "to cut, cleave, split" (cognates: Latin culter "knife," scalpere "to cut, scrape;" Old Church Slavonic skolika "mussel, shell," Russian skala "rind, bark," Lithuanian skelti "split," Old English scell "shell," scalu "drinking cup, bowl, scale of a balance").

In reference to humans, as a condition of certain skin diseases, it is attested from c. 1400. As what falls from one's eye when blindness ends (usually figurative), it echoes Acts ix:18 (Latin tanquam squamæ, Greek hosei lepides).
scale (n.2): weighing instrument, early 15c.; earlier "pan of a balance" (late 14c.); earlier still "drinking cup" (c. 1200), from Old Norse skal "bowl, drinking cup," in plural, "weighing scale" from a noun derivative of Proto-Germanic *skæla "split, divide" (cognates: Old Norse skel "shell," Old English scealu, Old Saxon skala "a bowl (to drink from)," Old High German scala, German Schale "a bowl, dish, cup," Middle Dutch scale, Dutch schaal "drinking cup, bowl, shell, scale of a balance"), from PIE root *skel- (1) "to cut" (see scale (n.1)).

The connecting sense seems to be of half of a bivalve ("split") shell used as a drinking cup or a pan for weighing. But according to Paulus Diaconus the "drinking cup" sense originated from a supposed custom of making goblets from skulls (see skull). Related: Scales. This, as a name for the zodiac constellation Libra, is attested in English from 1630s.
Scyphozoa: "A class of marine coelenterates which comprises the jellyfishes", Modern Latin (plural), from Greek skuphos 'drinking cup' + Greek zōion 'animal'.
cantharus: "(In ancient Greece and Rome) a large two-handled drinking cup", Latin, from Greek kantharos.