Dictionaries › English

pound

Pronunciation: /ˈpaʊ̯nd/

The English word “pound” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A unit of weight in various measurement systems.
  2. Various non-English units of measure.
  3. A unit of mass equal to 16 avoirdupois ounces (= 453.592 g). Today this value is the most common meaning of "pound" as a unit of weight.
  4. A unit of mass equal to 12 troy ounces (≈ 373.242 g). Today, this is a common unit of mass when measuring precious metals, and is little used elsewhere.
  5. The base unit of sterling, the currency used in the United Kingdom and some of its dependencies. It is divided into 100 pence.
  6. Any of various units of currency used in Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, and Syria, and formerly in the Republic of Ireland, Cyprus, Nigeria, Israel, and South Africa.
  7. Any of various units of currency formerly used in the United States.
  8. Various non-English units of currency not officially called pounds.
  9. The symbol #.
  10. A place for the detention of stray or wandering animals.
  11. The people who work for the pound.
  12. A place for the detention of automobiles that have been illegally parked, abandoned, etc.
  13. A section of a canal between two adjacent locks.
  14. A kind of fishing net, having a large enclosure with a narrow entrance into which fish are directed by wings spreading outward.
  15. A division inside a fishing stage where cod is cured in salt brine.

verb

  1. To wager a pound on.
  2. To confine in, or as in, a pound; to impound.
  3. To strike hard, usually repeatedly.
  4. To crush to pieces; to pulverize.
  5. To eat or drink very quickly.

Etymology

From Middle English pound, from Old English pund (“a pound, weight”), from Proto-West Germanic *pund, from Proto-Germanic *pundą (“pound, weight”), an early borrowing from Latin pondō (“by weight”), ablative form of pondus (“weight”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend- (“to pull, stretch”). Cognate with Dutch pond, German Pfund, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “pound” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.