Other forms: pounds
A pound is a unit of weight of about half a kilogram. Two pounds of flour, lose a pound, a pound of butter.
It is 453.6 grams exactly, sixteen ounces, and it survives in everyday British use alongside metric units. The same word is the British currency, and both come from the Roman pound of weight — the pound sterling was originally a pound of silver, which is why its symbol is a stylised L for libra.
1nounpoundA unit of weight of about half a kilogram.
“I bought two pounds of apples at the market.”
2nouncurrencyThe British unit of currency.
“The ticket for the museum costs twelve pounds, but children go in free.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pound is a unit.
Old English pund comes from Latin pondo, by weight, from pondus. The currency and the weight are the same word.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)pend- — to pull, stretch
Latin
pondō — by weight
Proto-Germanic
*pundą — pound, weight
Proto-West Germanic
*pund
Old English
pund — a pound, weight
Middle English
pound
English, today
pound
Built from
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 Swedish pund. a doublet of funt and pfund and pood and punt.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA