On Fri, 14 Jul 2017 00:32:38 -0300, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Tue, 11 Jul 2017 07:20:40 +0100, John Dunlop
wrote:

Over here we sometimes say "granny ring" for the wee ring.

I've heard "granny" only in "granny stop" and "granny gear". A granny
gear was an extra gear below your shifting pattern. You might, for
example, have an inmost sprocket a couple of steps bigger than the
next-larger sprocket (I think we called them "cogs" back then: more
metonymy) and set up your preferred pattern on the remaining four or
five sprockets.

I think it was originally a term used in the trucking business where
it referred to the lowest gear ratio, and thus lowest speed,
available.

It probably referred to the speed that Granny walked :-)

--
Cheers,

John B.