stone

In Great Britain, various obsolete units of mass:

1. A unit of mass = 14 pounds. The most common meaning.

As late as 1862, however, over a dozen other definitions of the stone were in use in various trades and locations in the United Kingdom.

2. A unit of mass = 5 pounds.

3. A unit of mass = 8 pounds.

4. A unit of mass = 20 pounds.

Elsewhere,

5. A unit of mass in Assyria.

1

From at least 1340, “stone” has usually referred to a unit of mass = 14 pounds. For a discussion of the origin of the 14-lb stone, see sack. Use of the stone in trade was abolished by the Weights and Measures Act of 1985. Among other uses, a person's weight was commonly expressed in stones with the remainder in pounds, for example, “6 stone 10.”

2

A stone of 5 pounds used for glass, mentioned in a document of 1302. It is also mentioned in Worlidge's dictionary (1704), which describes a 5-lb stone of grass, 24 of which make up a seam. “Grass” is probably a misprint for “glass.”

3

A stone of 8 pounds. In the 13th century it was used for spices and pharmaceuticals, “wax, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, nutmegs and alum.” By 1496, it was already referred to as being “of old time called the stone of London.” In the 1600s the 8-lb stone was still used for spices, but by 1700 it had become associated with butchers. The Weights and Measures Act of 1834 mentions it in passing as a unit to be suppressed in favor of a universal 14-lb stone. In 1934, 582 years after Edward III specified “every stone to weigh 14 lb,” the Board of Trade was writing its inspectors about “the old London or butcher's stone,” advising them “New machines [that is, scales] graduated in 8 lb units will be accepted for verification and stamping until 31 January 1935 it being understood, (1) that after that date no new machines so graduated are to be stamped.”

4

In the town of Burport, England, 16th century, a unit of mass used for hemp, = 20 pounds.

resorte to your said Towne to bye and provyde hempe and therof make canes ropes halsers traces halters and other tacle, …That no maner of person or persons, dwellyng or inhabytynge within the dystaunce of fyve myles frome the said Towne or Boroughe of Burporte, shall from hensforth sell or cause to be solde out of hthe Market holden and to be holden within the saem Towne or Borough of Burporte to any person or persons, any hempe which shall happen to growe within the said fyve myles in dystaunce from the said Towne or Borough; … PROVYDED always that xx poundes weyght shalbe accompted to the Stone.

21 Henry VIII chapter 12 (1529)

5

In Assyria, a unit of mass, about 1,290 grains.