The Law of Average

In the mid eighteenth century, british professionals outside of the maritime shipping industry began borrowing the term average to describe all kinds of losses spread out across assets in a mean or average proportion. By 17 55, we have the first attestation of the word being used in a purely mathematical context, divorced from any calculation of damages. There's not really a clear trail of bread crumbs available to us that shows how a word for beasts of burden might have led us into this new sematic territory, meaning damage.