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

In various books from the British Isles that I have read, I have come across the use of measuring weights (of people in particular) in "stones". Being American, I am not familiar with this weight measurement. Perhaps someone can enlighten me on What a "stone" is in pounds?

14

I'm tempted to leave it there, but will expand:
16 ounces (oz) = 1 pound (lb)
14 pounds + 1 stone (st)
2 stone = 1 quarter (qr)
4 quarters = 1 hundredweight (cwt)
20 hundredweight = 1 ton

A quick calculation will show you that an Imperial (natch) ton is therefore 2,240 lbs which is heavier than an American ton (which I would refer to as a short ton.)

I'd rather be 7 stone 12 than 110 pounds. 110 pounds immediately makes me think of two bags of wheat and the bags are enormous - so I'm stiking to stones they make me sound smaller and lighter!!

The effect is even better when you're 16 stone 7


Chorus of 'Who ate all the pies?, Who ate all the pies? ...'

I'd rather be 7 stone 10 lbs than what I weigh now

Not sure I follow you, Wandrin'. How many pounds are there in an American ton? Or are there less ounces in an American pound, like there are less fluid onces in an American pint (British pint=20 floz, American pint=16 floz - bit of a drag really when you go into a bar and get a short pint of Guinness ). People tend to forget the size difference when comparing petrol prices (an American gallon is 3/4 the size of a British gallon), but when the price difference is so vast, it hardly seems to matter anyway!

Hi,
Last time I needed the info, which was some time ago, there were 2,000 lbs in an American ton.
It could well be that there are fewer ounces in a pound. That would be why American recipes measure by volume rather than weight?

Americans have the same pounds and ounces as the UK. These are known as "avoirdupois" which is French for "having some weight". There are also troy pounds and ounces, also known as apothecary pounds and ounces, which are slightly different. There are 12 troy ounces in a troy pound and the troy ounce is 9.7% bigger than the avoirdupois ounce, being 31.10347711 grams.

I would have thought "avoir du pois" would mean to have some peas..."avoir du poids" would mean to have some weight.

I can't imagine anyone want to not use the metric system.
1000 grams = 1 kg (kg = kilogram = a thousand gram)
1000kg = 1 ton

It's that easy.


JAR, tosser of torches

I see. So Americans don't bother with things like quarters and hundredweights then? I suppose in that case you could just say "we'll have 2,000lbs in a ton and be done with it". I've found that Americans hardly ever seem to use tons anyway - they'll express the weight of something as 3,000,000 lbs rather than 1500 tons. The same thing with length - you'll see notices on the back of construction vehicles saying 'Keep Back 1,000 feet' rather than '...300 yards'. Metric would be so much easier, but I think that they'll have an even harder time to bring Americans around to it than they're having with the British right now - it's too, well, too goddamn yew-row-peen. It's just plain un-American.

I still have not managed to get my weight down to 7stone 11

And then there was that embarrassing cock up over metric and Imperial measurements with the Mars Climate Orbiter, causing the $125million spaceship to go splat into the planet