Dictionary Definition
avoirdupois
Noun
1 a system of weights based on the 16-ounce pound
(or 7,000 grains) [syn: avoirdupois
weight]
2 excess bodily weight; "she found fatness
disgusting in herself as well as in others" [syn: fatness, fat, blubber] [ant: leanness]
User Contributed Dictionary
Noun
avoirdupoisSee also
Extensive Definition
The avoirdupois (; French ) system is a system of
weights
(or, properly, mass) based
on a pound of
sixteen ounces. It is the
everyday system of weight used in the United
States. It is still widely used by many people in Canada and the
United
Kingdom despite the official adoption of the metric
system, including the compulsory introduction of metric units
in shops. It is considered more modern than the alternative
troy
or
apothecary or the medieval English mercantile and Tower
systems.
History of the term
The word avoirdupois is from French and Middle English (Anglo-French) avoir de pois, "goods of weight" or "goods sold by weight", from Old French aveir de peis, literally "goods of weight" (Old French aveir, "property, goods", also "to have", comes from the Latin habere, "to have, to hold, to possess property"; de = "from", cf. Latin; peis = "weight", from Latin pensum). This term originally referred to a class of merchandise: aveir de peis, "goods of weight", things that were sold in bulk and were weighed on large steelyards or balances. Only later did it become identified with a particular system of units used to weigh such merchandise. The imaginative orthography of the day and the passage of the term through a series of languages (Latin, Anglo-French and English) has left many variants of the term, such as haberty-poie and haber de peyse. (The Norman peis became the Parisian pois. In the 17th century de was replaced with du.)Original forms
These are the units in their original French
forms:
Note: The plural of quintal is quintaux.
British adaptation
When people in Britain
began to use this system they included the stone,
which was eventually defined as fourteen avoirdupois pounds. The
quarter, hundredweight, and ton were altered, respectively, to
28 lb, 112 lb, and 2,240 lb in order for
masses to be easily
converted between them and stones. The following are the units in
the British or
imperial
adaptation of the avoirdupois system:
Note: The plural form of stone is conventionally
written the same as the singular when used after a number.
American customary system
The thirteen
British colonies in North
America (not including those that formed Canada), however,
adopted the French system as it was. In the United States,
quarters, hundredweights, and tons remain defined as 25, 100, and
2,000 lb respectively. The quarter is now virtually
unused, as is the hundredweight outside of agriculture and
commodities. If disambiguation is required then they are referred
to as the "short" units, as opposed to the British "long"
units.
Internationalization
In the avoirdupois system, all units are
multiples or fractions of the
pound, which is now defined as 0.45359237 kg in most of the
English-speaking world since 1959. (See the Mendenhall
Order for references.)
Due to the ambiguous meanings of "weight" as
referring to both mass and force, it is sometimes erroneously
asserted that the pound is only a unit of force. However, as
defined above the pound is a unit of mass, which agrees with common
usage. Also see pound-force and
pound-mass.
See also
References
avoirdupois in Czech: Avoirdupois
avoirdupois in German: Avoirdupois
avoirdupois in Spanish: Dracma medicinal
avoirdupois in Croatian: Avoirdupois sustav
mjera
avoirdupois in Dutch: Avoirdupois
avoirdupois in Japanese: 常衡
avoirdupois in Portuguese:
Avoirdupois
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
beef,
beefiness, deadweight, fatness, gravity, gross weight, heaviness, heft, heftiness, liveweight, neat weight,
net, net weight, overbalance, overweight, ponderability, ponderosity, ponderousness, poundage, tonnage, underweight, weight, weightiness