# British weight: what does "st" mean? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 11, 2003, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225 "2003-06-11T23:25:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2003, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/41 "2003-08-24T14:50:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by amarone \* > **There are 20 hundredweights in a British ton, so some nice consistency with 20 shillings in a pound.** Except that, according to the .pdf file that **everton** provided a link to above, the shilling was originally defined to be 1/12 of a pound, not 1/20 of a pound like it was at the outset of the last century. (The penny, however, was 1/240 of a pound in both cases.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Griffin)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2003, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/42 "2003-08-24T15:28:27Z")
I dont understand why americans dont use the stone. It’s a nice friendly measurement that makes the numbers smaller. ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2003, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/43 "2003-08-24T15:43:55Z")
The railway industy in the UK still use chains. All measurments on the trackside ( for instance between signal posts etc. ) are measured in miles and chains. ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2003, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/44 "2003-08-24T17:59:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Griffin \* > \*\*I dont understand why americans dont use the stone. It’s a nice friendly measurement that makes the numbers smaller. \*\* Maybe Americans prefer big numbers. You will often see measurements in feet that would be in yards in the UK, for example: Lane ends, 1000 ft. Even weights over 1 ton are often expressed in pounds, e.g. the 5,280 Lb memorial of the 10 commandments currently causing so much controversy in Alabama. ---
**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2003, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/45 "2003-08-24T20:29:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rayne Man \* > \*\*The railway industy in the UK still use chains. All measurments on the trackside ( for instance between signal posts etc. ) are measured in miles and chains. \*\* [SIZE=3}Chains[/SIZE] is a term used in the US by surveyors. In times past chains made up of long links were used for land measurement as they were durable and measurements were reproducible which was not the case with fabric or other tape measuring materials. Today steel or fiberglass is prevalent and laser levels and theodolites are used extensively. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/46 "2003-08-25T15:53:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by amarone \* > **Maybe Americans prefer big numbers.** Pah. If that were true, we’d be measuring our height in inches, not feet-and-inches. Or even better, centimeters. Which sounds more impressive: “I have a 6-inch wiener” or “I have a 15-centimeter wiener”? ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/47 "2003-08-25T16:01:00Z")
I was really just pointing out that there are several situations where America chooses to use larger numbers when there are other units available, so there would be little likelihood they would choose stones merely to get smaller numbers. I doubt there is a conscious decision to choose units that result in big numbers, just that having big numbers is not in itself regarded as being a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/48 "2003-08-25T17:05:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by kabbes \* > \*\*A small note: I would have thought that we use stones for the same reason all the Imperial measurement ended up being used: they are convenient. On average (at least in the past) an average weight of a person would have been about 10 stone. How much nicer than saying 65kg or 140lb. > > Similarly, it is simpler for a person to comprehend their height at 5 (feet) than it is 60 inches or 150cm (or 1.5m). > > People generally prefer small numbers in the 5 to 15 kind of range. > \*\* Yes, but it messes up precision. Stating your weight as “10 stone” doesn’t look very precise at first glance, and indeed it could be anything between 9.5 stone ( = 60.3 kg) and 10.49 stone ( = 66.6 kg) - a range of more than six kilograms or almost fourteen pounds is way too much for giving the weight of a person. Of course you could come up with fractions of a stone, but IMHO talking about your 10.3 stone weight eats up the advantages of being in the 5 to 15 range. Of course this is all a matter of what you’re accustomed to. To me, weight in kilogram and height in centimetres works just fine. ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/49 "2003-08-25T17:17:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Schnitte \* > \*\*Yes, but it messes up precision. Stating your weight as “10 stone” doesn’t look very precise at first glance, and indeed it could be anything between 9.5 stone ( = 60.3 kg) and 10.49 stone ( = 66.6 kg) - a range of more than six kilograms or almost fourteen pounds is way too much for giving the weight of a person. Of course you could come up with fractions of a stone, but IMHO talking about your 10.3 stone weight eats up the advantages of being in the 5 to 15 range. > \*\* I find people tend to use half-stone precision e.g. “13 and a half stone.” For more precision, people say, for example, “13 stone 5.” ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/50 "2003-08-25T18:03:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shade \* > **We seem remarkably resistant to 10, though it’s gained a lot in poularity recently 🙂** For all the noise made by those touting the supposed superiority of the metric system, 10 really isn’t a very good base to build a measuring system on, for reasons which have been gone into many times before on this board and elsewhere. Briefly, 10 is divisible only by 2 and 5, in contrast to the much more generous factors available to bases 12, 16, or 60. Yes, it is much easier under the metric system to shift scales between millimeters and kilometers, than between inches and miles but frankly, this is a relatively rare operation in the real world, and, with the widespread availability of calculators, is not much of a problem. Subdividing a quantity of something, on the other hand, is an extraordinarily common real-world operation. Half of this, a quarter of that, etc. This is something that we all do many times each day. Even when metric measurements are used, there is a tendancy to work with more divisible groupings. For example, [one source](http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/metric_land.htm) notes that in Europe, carpenters don’t buy boards by the meter, but by a standard length of 120 centimeters. If you use the metric system in your industry or your country, and you are comfortable with it and like it, fine. Just don’t make exaggerated claims about its inherent superiority. What it’s best at isn’t very useful, and what it’s worst at is. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/51 "2003-08-25T18:44:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Yes, it is much easier under the metric system to shift scales between millimeters and kilometers, than between inches and miles but frankly, this is a relatively rare operation in the real world, and, with the widespread availability of calculators, is not much of a problem. If you even remember the conversions in the first place. Yes, I can remember 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, 1760 yards (or 5280 feet) to the mile, and I know 8 ounces to the cup, 2 or 2.5 cups to the pint, 2 pints to the quart, 4 quarts to the gallon. But I don’t remember how many square feet in an acre, and the number of feet in the square root of an acre isn’t even rational. Likewise, I don’t know how many cubic inches or cubic feet in a gallon. I don’t know how many tablespoons there are in an ounce, nor teaspoons in a tablespoon. And God forbid I should ever need to use pecks, bushels, rods, leagues, or any other “archaic” measurement. And these are practical things to know: If I’m making 8 or 10 times of a recipe for a bake sale, I’d like to be able to measure the baking soda in my (ounce-marked or cup-marked) measuring cup, rather than doing 8 or 10 teaspoons. And if I know the length, width, and height of a fish tank, it’d be nice to know how much water it can hold. By contrast, I can convert between any two metric measurements in my head, faster than I can pull out my calculator, and I’ve been able to do so since I was in second grade. And granted that 10 only has two nontrivial factors, it’s also the base for the number system used by most of humanity. Yes, it’d be nicer if both our units system and our number system were based on 12 or 30, but that’s not the case. And 14 has all of the failings of 10 (being 2\*7), but without the advantages. If you want a more convenient weight unit, why not make it 10 pounds? ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/52 "2003-08-25T19:45:08Z")
Britain has never wholeheartedly accepted the metric system: The construction industry uses metres… We measure ourselves in feet and inches and our roads are measured in miles. We weigh ourselves in pounds and drink pints… our food is measured in kilos. Athletes run 100 metres… Soccer players shoot from 30 yards. The BBC insists on weather forecasts in Celsius… Everyone else thinks in fahrenheit. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/53 "2003-08-25T19:46:57Z")
We weigh ourselves in _Stones_ and pounds… Maybe sometimes in pounds. Never in Kilos. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/54 "2003-08-26T01:18:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Chronos \* > **If you even remember the conversions in the first place. Yes, I can remember 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, 1760 yards (or 5280 feet) to the mile, and I know 8 ounces to the cup, 2 or 2.5 cups to the pint, 2 pints to the quart, 4 quarts to the gallon. […] I don’t know how many tablespoons there are in an ounce, nor teaspoons in a tablespoon.** And, of course, it’s much worse than this. There are 5280 feet in a mile, right? Not if you’re talking about **U.S. survey feet** , there aren’t! A U.S. survey foot is 12.000024 inches long, so there are only 5,279.989 of these feet in a mile. That may not sound like much of a difference, but U.S. survey feet are still used on surveyors charts showing where property lines are, and I’ll bet you dollars to donut holes these tiny differences havve sparked their share of heated property disputes. And, of course, even if we discount U.S. survey feet and stick with international feet here, we’re still talking about **statute** miles. An international nautical mile – the kind used by ships and airplanes – is substantially longer, at 6076.1 feet. A British nautical mile is slightly longer still, at precisely 6080 feet. Confusingly, some figures listed in U.S. Federal Aviation Regulations are given in statute miles (e.g. Class D airspace extends 5 “miles” around an airport control tower, and you need 3 “miles” of visibility to fly in controlled airspace without an Instrument clearance), while others are given in nautical miles (e.g. a cross-country flight is defined as one where one of the airports is over 50 “miles” from the aircraft’s home base, and the airspeed limit in Class C or D airspace is 200 “miles” per hour). Now then – about there being 8 “ounces” to the cup. As you probably already know, these are **fluid** ounces (a unit of volume), not Troy or avoirdupois ounces (units of weight). However, what you may not realize is that the U.S. fluid ounce and the British fluid ounce are **different sizes!** The British fluid ounce is sized so that 1 fl. oz. of water weighs almost exactly one ounce avoirdupois, but an American fluid ounce is noticeably larger. One U.S. pint of water, which is 16 U.S. fluid ounces, weighs about 16 and a quarter ounces avoirdupois – and should not be confused with a British pint of water, which is 20 British fluid ounces. How many teaspoons there are in an “ounce,” then, depends on which country you’re in. This, then, is one of the main strengths of the metric system. There is **one** , and only one, unit called the meter. There is one, and only one, unit called a liter. There is one, and only one, unit called the gram. There are no British liters or U.S. liters. There are no statute meters or nautical meters or U.S. survey meters. There are no Troy grams or avoirdupois grams. And there are certainly no “fluid grams.” If I go into a bar, in any country, and get “half a liter of beer”, I know **exactly** how much beer I’m getting. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/55 "2003-08-26T03:28:29Z")
Except…if you walk into a US bar and ask for a ‘half liter of beer’ you are likely to get only a puzzled stare. ---
**Author:** ![kabbes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e99b99/32.png) [@kabbes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kabbes)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/56 "2003-08-26T10:17:04Z")
What is this mysterious unit known as the “meter”? I’ve never heard of it. (Note: this post has several layers of irony. Please feel free to delve into them all…) pan ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/57 "2003-08-26T12:53:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Chronos \* > \*\*If you even remember the conversions in the first place. Yes, I can remember 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, 1760 yards (or 5280 feet) to the mile, and I know 8 ounces to the cup, 2 or 2.5 cups to the pint, 2 pints to the quart, 4 quarts to the gallon. > > But I don’t remember how many square feet in an acre, and the number of feet in the square root of an acre isn’t even rational. Likewise, I don’t know how many cubic inches or cubic feet in a gallon. I don’t know how many tablespoons there are in an ounce, nor teaspoons in a tablespoon. And God forbid I should ever need to use pecks, bushels, rods, leagues, or any other “archaic” measurement. And these are practical things to know: If I’m making 8 or 10 times of a recipe for a bake sale, I’d like to be able to measure the baking soda in my (ounce-marked or cup-marked) measuring cup, rather than doing 8 or 10 teaspoons. And if I know the length, width, and height of a fish tank, it’d be nice to know how much water it can hold.\*\* It is very interesting to look at the interrelationships between the various English measurements. They DO have a rational basis, it’s just not what you are expecting. The 5280 feet in a mile, for example, is eight furlongs of 660 feet. The furlong is ten (Hey! A decimal multiplier!) chains (an old surveyor’s measurement) of 66 feet. An acre is ten square chains – which explains the 43,560 square feet figure. I find the interrelationships, and the history behind them (a chain is four rods of 16.5 feet – which was the standard length of a fencerail AND the standard width of a lane of roadbed) to be quite fascinating. Perhaps not as simple to grasp as the metric system, but again, converting between various units is rare, relative to the number of times that we subdivide unit. Hence my claim that the metric system is only superior in ways that are not relevent to most day to day use. For measuring pharmecuticals, metric is wonderful. For[cooking](http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/metric_land.htm), much less so. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/58 "2003-08-26T12:58:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shade \* > You resurrected this thread to nitpick _that_? > > Anyway, I was using “weigh” in the colloquial sense to mean “have a mass of at 1g.” I mean, I was using kg as an abbreviation for kilogram-weight. **Hey, imperial uses pounds for both…** Uh, or maybe I was using “make sense” to mean “be an expected development” not “conform correctly to dimensional analysis.” Yeah, that’s it. 🙂 Not so. The pound is the British unit of weight, but there’s a different British unit for mass: the slug. (Pretty little name, in’it? them Brits with their quaintness and all.) From [Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics](http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Slug.html): > [@](#): > > SLUG > > The unit of mass in the foot-pound-second (British engineering) system, equal to the mass that will require an acceleration of 1 ft/s when subjected to a force of 1 pound. It is therefore equal to 1 lb s ft, 32.1740 pound-mass or 14.5939 kg (O’Hanian 1985, pp. 14 and 96-97) While I admit that the slug isn’t very well known, with weight being confused with mass, our buddy Eric Weisstein is rather snuffy about that as well, as he explains in his entry for [mass](http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Mass.html): > [@](#): > > While no less an authority than the National Institute of Standards and Technology notes that “in commercial and everyday one, and especially in common parlance, weight is usually used as a synonym for mass” (Taylor 1995, p. 24), _this extremely confusing practice should be universally discouraged._ So there. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/59 "2003-08-26T15:46:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Northern Piper \* > **Not so. The pound is the British unit of weight, but there’s a different British unit for mass: the slug. (Pretty little name, in’it? them Brits with their quaintness and all.)** Actually, American engineers use the “pound mass” quite frequently. In rocketry, in fact, they use both at once – the _specific impulse_ (I[sub]sp[/sub]) of a rocket engine is defined as how long you can burn one “pound” (mass) of fuel-and-oxidizer so as to produce one “pound” (force/weight) of thrust. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225/60 "2003-08-26T15:52:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BrotherCadfael \* > \*\*For all the noise made by those touting the supposed superiority of the metric system, 10 really isn’t a very good base to build a measuring system on, for reasons which have been gone into many times before on this board and elsewhere. > > Briefly, 10 is divisible only by 2 and 5, in contrast to the much more generous factors available to bases 12, 16, or 60.\*\* Then why have American manufacturers, without any legislative pressure at all, switched over to specifying lengths in **decimal inches**? And why can I walk into any hardware store and find a tape measure calibrated in **tenths of a foot**? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-weight-what-does-st-mean/181225.md?page=4)