Coomb

A traditional dry commodity volume unit equal to four bushels.

The coomb sits between the bushel and the quarter, being four of the former and half of the latter, and it existed because a bushel was too small a unit for wholesale dealing and a quarter too large for a single cart. It was particularly associated with East Anglia and the corn trade of Norfolk and Suffolk, where maltsters and merchants dealt in coombs as a matter of routine. The name comes from the Old English cumb, a vessel or valley, and shares a root with the coomb or combe that appears in place names across southern England for a hollow in the hills. A coomb of barley weighed around eighteen stone, which is about what two men could manage between them, and that is very probably why the unit settled where it did.