We recently did our best to whet linguistic appetites by comparing the words fodder and grist: we pointed out, among other things, that both words claim Old English ancestry, where they enjoyed strictly literal senses, and that both terms moved into the modern ages with metaphoric applications. (来源：www.EnglishCN.com)

The figurative sense of grist is familiar to many of us in the phrase grist to (or for) one's mill. Grist for one's mill names "something turned to one's own advantage or use."

The original, literal sense of grist referred to "the act of grinding;" that sense (now obsolete) is logical when you consider that the Middle English ancestor of grist was akin to the Old English verb meaning "to grind."

But grist stuck around, naming first grain, or "a batch of grain for grinding;" and then "the product obtained from a grist of grain, including the flour or meal and the grain offals."

The meanings of grist then expanded from the mill and moved into the general vocabulary. It developed first the sense "a required or usual amount" and then the one naming "a matter of interest or value forming the basis of a story or analysis."