h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This has kept me awake at night, any one have an answer?

Comes from the French word for pound : livre, is what I've herd, or maybe from Latin *libella*, which was a silver coin

Just looked it up : it's from Latin ' libra', which used to be a Roman pound. The 's' is probably just indicating a plural, or short for 'Sterling', I don't know.

A pound weight is always written as "lb" to prevent confusion with pound money "£". As B'Elana says, the LB is from the Roman word Libra

I have wondered about that a very long time. Thanks for the info. . Here's a another question then. Why o hot dogs come in packages of 12, but buns come in packages of 8?

so you buy one of each, then more buns, then more hotdogs, then more buns, etc etc!

Lb weight used to be equivalent to Lb gold. Centuries ago. Since then, the weights use has diverged from the currency use, but once upon a time they were equivalent.

Stop buying s is the answer. They're made of tails, mechanically recovered meat, trotters, tripe and gristle.

RF

Yeah but here in the US at least you can buy all beef hotdogs so you know what kind of tails are in them. I personally think that the extra dogs are to make double dogs a couple of times.