Thanks Cindy. I hoped someone would come up with an answer, and I was
basically just too lazy to look.
Dave
Dave,
I haven't finished reading all 113 pieces of e-mail (I was gone most of the day -- and so I've been attacked by the April Fool) so I don't know if anyone else has answered your question. I never thought about it before, but it's a good question -- and once I hear something like that I become obssessed with finding the answer.
Thanks to google, (my eytymological dictionary didn't help) here's the explanation.
"Why are pounds, when used as a weight, abbreviated lbs?"
The origin is in the Latin word libra, which could mean both balance scales (hence the symbol for the astrological sign Libra, which was named after a constellation that was thought to resemble scales) and also a pound weight, for which the full expression was libra pondo, the second word being the origin of our pound.
Guido, did you or Alyosius know that? Maybe I needn't have looked it up (smile).
Cindy
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