Why do they call pounds lbs

Bonnie Kristian. Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope. Cathy Young. Most Popular. Adorable rare leopard cub makes her debut at Santa Barbara Zoo. Biden maintains spending bill will ease inflation. Most measuring abbreviations are pretty straightforward "tbsp" for tablespoon, "qt" for quart, "cm" for centimeter, you get the gist.

But there's one major exception: "lb" for pound — what?! You've seen it on grocery signs across America, and people are always talking about losing some "lbs" when dieting, but it hardly makes any sense As The Huffington Post has so cleverly pointed out , "lb" is an abbreviation for the Latin word libra , which is the seventh sign of the zodiac and is symbolized by scales cue lightbulb moment.

The word libra referred to balance or scales in Roman times and was also part of a unit of measurement known as "libra pondo," which when translated is "pound weight" or "a pound by weight.

To add even more confusion to the matter, Americans use the word "pound" as a measurement for weight, but the British associate it with their currency, which is known as the pound.

This is because the original value of what was used for money in Britain was equivalent to a pound of silver. But the Americans and British aren't the only people to take words from the Ancient romans. As for the word ounce, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica , it originates from the Latin word uncia , which was the name for both a Roman unit of weight and length. According to The Week , uncia was borrowed by the Anglo-Norman French as "ounce" and then lent to their neighbors in England. The abbreviation, though, came from Medieval Italian, who had taken the Latin word uncia and turned it into onza , introducing the "z" into the word.

It's unclear exactly why the "z" shows up in English abbreviations, but it's clear that it came from Medieval Italian and then stuck around.

By Melissa Locker.