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Avoirdupois definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

AVOIRDUPOIS', n. s as z. [See Poise.]
A weight, of which a pound contains 16 ounces. Its proportion to a pound Troy is as 17 to 14. this is the weight for the larger and coarser commodities, as hay, iron, cheese, groceries, etc.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a system of weights based on the 16-ounce pound (or 7,000 grains) [syn: avoirdupois, avoirdupois weight]
2: excess bodily weight; "she disliked fatness in herself as well as in others" [syn: fatness, fat, blubber, avoirdupois] [ant: leanness, spareness, thinness]

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Middle English avoir de pois goods sold by weight, from Anglo-French, literally, goods of weight Date: 15th century 1. avoirdupois weight 2. weight, heaviness; especially personal weight II. adjective Date: 1755 expressed in avoirdupois weight <one ounce avoirdupois>

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. (in full avoirdupois weight) a system of weights based on a pound of 16 ounces or 7,000 grains. Etymology: ME f. OF aveir de peis goods of weight f. aveir f. L habere have + peis (see POISE(1))

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Avoirdupois Av`oir*du*pois" ([a^]v`[~e]r*d[-u]*poiz"), n. & a. [OE. aver de peis, goods of weight, where peis is fr. OF. peis weight, F. poids, L. pensum. See Aver, n., and Poise, n.] 1. Goods sold by weight. [Obs.] 2. Avoirdupois weight. 3. Weight; heaviness; as, a woman of much avoirdupois. [Colloq.] Avoirdupois weight, a system of weights by which coarser commodities are weighed, such as hay, grain, butter, sugar, tea. Note: The standard Avoirdupois pound of the United States is equivalent to the weight of 27.7015 cubic inches of distilled water at 62[deg] Fahrenheit, the barometer being at 30 inches, and the water weighed in the air with brass weights. In this system of weights 16 drams make 1 ounce, 16 ounces 1 pound, 25 pounds 1 quarter, 4 quarters 1 hundred weight, and 20 hundred weight 1 ton. The above pound contains 7,000 grains, or 453.54 grams, so that 1 pound avoirdupois is equivalent to 1 31-144 pounds troy. (See Troy weight.) Formerly, a hundred weight was reckoned at 112 pounds, the ton being 2,240 pounds (sometimes called a long ton).

Moby Thesaurus

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