[abarro81]

Someone should have stuck that in a guide or something. I think I would have found it useful to know back when I climbed on grit quite a lot... Now you say it it does make some sense, but if you started climbing somewhere without many micro routes it's not obvious. I'm also not entirely sure that's how it's used round the country? I don't recall micro routes in Avon feeling like they used that system, but maybe I'm misremembering.

Handily most guides do include a few paragraphs on grades:

The system of grading for routes in this volume is the traditional British style, a combination of adjectival and technical grades, and assumes the leader has a normal rack, including standard camming devices, nuts, slings, quickdraws etc. The adjectival grade is the first part of the grade, and attempts to give an overall sense of the difficulty of a climb. This will be influenced by many aspects.

Being a massive dweeb I've gone and checked a few other guides and they all include very similar wording (Rockfax eastern grit, CC South Devon, CC Dartmoor, The Sheffield-Stanage area 1970 reprint, Peak Limestone South 1987, Moorland Gritstone Chew Valley 1988, Derwent Valley 1981).

You could be forgiven for thinking the adjectival grade is widely understood to "give an overall sense of the difficulty of a climb".

No Remus, the only explanation is that we all thought it worked like that because we want it to be like sport grades. Especially those authors of the 1970s guide 

[kingholmesy]

I’ve only bothered to read half this thread, but basically JB and Northern Yob are correct.  But then maybe I only think that cos I’m squarely in this Venn overlap:

You probably are in a relatively small Venn overlap of specialties there, ankle-breaker grit soloing and seaside death choss.

The best two types of climbing right?