Why Do You Call School Years/Classes “Grade”?

13 comments

1. Because we do?

   Why do British schools call a class-president-type a “perfect”? Because they just do.

2. Why do you make “math” plural? Isn’t it funny how dialects can be different in differently countries?

3. Y’all use “year” we use “grade”.

   As to the origin, i don’t know. But it happens. Different places have different names for things.

4. Because they both mean “to group and sort based on quality.” Since we use letters for one and numbers for the other, there’s no confusion. When numbers are used for scores, the phrase is usually “I got a X in that class/paper,” so there’s still no confusion

   You could just as easily refer to the scores you get as classes as well

5. I don’t know the reason why “grade” was chosen in North America, but such linguistic differences are not uncommon between populations with a common language origin that have been separated by centuries and geographical barriers.

   You might also ask this in r/AskACanadian (although they would say “Grade 9,” whereas we would say “9th Grade”)—someone there might know.

6. >Why Do You Call School Years/Classes “Grade”?

   That’s what you are taught. That’s all you have ever known. You’d have to go back 200 years to find the source of the terminology.

7. > **1510s**, “degree of measurement,” from French grade “grade, degree” (16c.), from Latin gradus “a step, a pace, gait; **a step climbed (on a ladder or stair)**;” figuratively **”a step toward something**, a **degree of something rising by stages**

   https://www.etymonline.com/word/grade

   Why do you think your dialect of English is more correct, OP?

   Also, it’s astonishingly ridiculous to write Americans (US) knowing that you’re asking Americans a question. You even addressed it with “American English”.

8. >Where I am from grade means only the score you have on a test, not which year or class you study in.

   I thought those were called marks? As in: how are your marks in school?

9. Because.

   noun: grade; plural noun: grades

   a particular level of **rank**, quality, proficiency, intensity, or value.

10. Y’all are being really over sensitive about a pretty interesting etymology question. I’ve never thought about the origin but it seems to have some root in how schooling formed here. Much of the country was sparsely populated, and children went to organized schools in one room buildings where children of every age were taught together. Once the communities developed more and children could be separated into age groups, those were referred to as “graded” schools. The root is from the Latin, “gradus”,

11. Just an Americanism. I was wondering why Indians use the word standard the same way Americans use grade. Like 7th standard and 7th grade are the same thing. Also in Canada, it’s grade 7, not 7th grade. It seems like different countries have their own method for this.

12. From what I understand, it’s a relic from when the US transitioned from all-ages schoolhouses to a tiered system based on age, ungraded and graded schools in the sense of rank. Each class was just called a grade.

    Also, can we cool it on the downvotes? This isn’t a particularly heinous question or anything.

13. This is the “American English is wrong and weird and needs to explain itself” mindset. You aren’t going to find most actual speakers appreciate it very much.

    To actual speakers of American English, a class is a regular meeting of students with the same teacher either at a certain level or for a certain subject, so that’s not the same thing as what grade a student is in. Year is about age: most fifth graders are ten-year-olds.