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demijohn – is a volume measurement, and a barrel of that volume. (People who laugh at anything will joke that a demijohn is half a lavatory; people whose thoughts start and stop at the dictionary will parrot that it is a large glass container often wrapped in straw.) It might seem logical to guess that a demijohn is a barrel that is half the volume of a “john”, but there is no such measurement, and the source of the word is obscure. One guess is that the name derives from dame Jeanne, supposedly a French name for the same barrel size, although this just casts the question over the English Channel. Traditionally, a demijohn is a standard measurement for a barrel of wine, corresponding to roughly 24 bottles of wine, or about 627 fluid ounces.

Cash for the hard goods,
Cash for the fancy goods,
Cash for the soft goods,
Cash for the noggins and the piggins and the firkins,
Cash for the hogshead, cask and demijohn,
Cash for the crackers and the pickles and the flypaper.

(From “Rock Island”, in “The Music Man”, by Meredith Willson.