{"id":846,"date":"2016-10-13T15:06:02","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T15:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=846"},"modified":"2016-10-13T15:06:02","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T15:06:02","slug":"pound-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=846","title":{"rendered":"Pound Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

This time of year you see all the pumpkins for sale and most are priced by the pound\u2026 it always reminds me of when our daughter, Kelly, was probably 4 or 5 years old. A friend had taken her to a pumpkin patch or a fall festival or something like that and she came home with a pumpkin that was almost as big as she was. When we asked her where she got it, she said she won<\/em> it. When asked how, she explained that everyone was supposed to guess how many labels and she guessed the number of labels that was the closest, so she won it.
\nIt took a long time, but we finally figured out that the contest was to guess how much the pumpkin weighed and the person who came the closest got the pumpkin. It turns out that the sign said, \u201cGuess how many lbs. and win the pumpkin.\u201d So Kelly came the closest. We tried to explain that lbs. wasn\u2019t labels, but stood for pounds, but she looked at us like we were really stupid and pretty much told us we didn\u2019t know what we were talking about. How stupid can you be if you think the abbreviation for pound is lb? Of course we gave up trying to convince a 4 or 5 year old, but I always wondered why we abbreviate pound that way.<\/p>\n

If you look it up, you\u2019ll find that supposedly lb is actually an abbreviation for the Latin word libra. But the problem with that, in my mind at least, is that libra in Latin originally meant \u201cstone.\u201d If you dig deeper, or as I like to say \u2014 do extensive research, lb is an abbreviation of the word libra, which could<\/em> mean a pound, but libra itself is a shortened term of the full expression, libra pondo, which means \u201cpound weight.\u201d Pondo, by the way, is the origin of the English pound. So it seems to me that they cut off the wrong half of the expression when looking to abbreviate pound.<\/p>\n

My extensive research also reminded me that Libra is also an astrological sign \u2014 the seventh sign of the zodiac. The name was given to a rather uninspiring constellation, with no particularly bright stars in it. It was thought to represent scales, or a balance, which more accurately describes the Latin term libra. That\u2019s the reason it is often accompanied by the image of a pair of scales.<\/p>\n

Another abbreviation of libra (\u00a3) is an ornate form of L with a cross-stroke (the way a medieval scribe marked an abbreviation.) This is also the symbol used for the English pound. The link between the the two senses of pound, weight and money, is that in England a thousand years ago a pound in money was equivalent to the value of a pound of silver.
\nIt also occurs to me that we use the symbol \u201c#\u201d on our phones and refer to it as the pound sign or button \u2014 of course, we also use it to mean \u201cnumber.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyhow, I\u2019ve decided that this will just remain a mystery to me\u2026 I just don\u2019t get it \u2014 I\u2019m with Kelly, it should mean labels. But I guess we\u2019ll continue to buy our pumpkins by the lb.
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time of year you see all the pumpkins for sale and most are priced by the pound\u2026 it always reminds me of when our daughter, Kelly, was probably 4 or 5 years old. A friend had taken her to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1014,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/1014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}