Threshing Floor

Threshing Floor

Threshing (thrashing) was originally "...'to tramp or stamp heavily with the feet'..." and was later applied to the act of separating out grain by the feet of people or oxen and still later with the use of a flail. A threshing floor is of two main types: 1) a specially flattened outdoor surface, usually circular and paved, or 2) inside a building with a smooth floor of earth, stone or wood where a farmer would thresh the grain harvest and then winnow it. Animal and steam powered threshing machines from the nineteenth century onward made threshing floors obsolete. The outdoor threshing floor was either owned by the entire village or by a single family, and it was usually located outside the village in a place exposed to the wind.

Read more about Threshing Floor:  Structure of Outdoor Floors, Structure of Indoor Floors, Use, External Links

Famous quotes containing the word floor:

    Four and twenty at her back
    And they were a’ clad out in green;
    Tho the King of Scotland had been there
    The warst o’ them might hae been his Queen.

    On we lap and awa we rade
    Till we cam to yon bonny ha’
    Whare the roof was o’ the beaten gold
    And the floor was o’ the cristal a’.
    —Unknown. The Wee Wee Man (l. 21–28)