Why is lb the abbreviation for pound?

bottle_rocket

It comes from the latin word libra for "scales" which was also used by the Romans as a measure of weight similar to the pound. Mar 22 07, 2:01 PM

Eolena

"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." http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pou1.htm Mar 22 07, 2:02 PM

darkpresence

Very fast! Thanks, didn't think there really was a reason. Mar 22 07, 2:04 PM

romeomikegolf

The abbreviation lb only applies to weight. The symbol for the Pound Sterling is £. Mar 23 07, 10:26 AM

Baloo55th

And # is NOT a pound sign of any sort in the UK, no matter what some people outside may think. Mar 23 07, 11:10 AM

queproblema

But over here in the US of A we do call "#" on a telephone the "pound button," and often write "#" to mean a pound avoirdupois. It also means "number." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign Mar 23 07, 8:50 PM

Baloo55th

Here, it's assumed to mean number, although we usually put No. Mar 24 07, 8:03 AM

darkpresence

I've always called # the hash symbol but yes, I use it to mean number. Mar 25 07, 3:09 PM

What-A-Mess

And I thought it was a Tic-Tac-Toe board!? :-) It has many other names (and uses) in English. (Those in bold are listed as alternative names in the Unicode documentation.) * comment sign o from its use in many shell scripts and some programming languages like Perl to introduce comments * crosshatch o resemblance * fence, gate, grid, gridlet o resemblance * hash / hash mark / hash sign o the most common name outside the U.S., including in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. o Used in Ireland, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand on touch-tone telephones – "Please press the hash key" o In the UK and Australia the symbol is often used as medical shorthand for 'fracture' [1][2] o Used among computer professionals. For example, in Unix scripting, it's used in combination with an exclamation mark to produce a "#!" or "hash-bang," used to tell the kernel which program to use to run the script. * hex o from its use to denote hexadecimal values in some markup and programming languages * mesh o introduced in the tonsil of the Intercal reference manual, and often reproduced in The Hacker's Dictionary * octothorn William Sherk in 500 Years of New Words (1983), p. 272, has the following entry: "Octothorn, The number sign (#); so called because there are eight points, or thorns, sticking out of it ..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign Mar 25 07, 4:34 PM