Quote:
Originally Posted by Billi
Wow, thank you. Why is "lb" the abbreviation for "pounds"?
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Ah, one of my favourite etymological questions
. Thank you for asking.
The Romans had a unit of weight called the "libra pondo" ("pound weight"). Rather perversely, English has taken the second of these words for its unit of the "Pound", but used the first word as the basis for the abbreviation. Western European languages pretty much all have a unit of weight that's called either a variant of "libra" or a variant of "pondo".
Strange but true
.