Stone (weight)
Encyclopedia
The stone is a units of measurement
that was used in many North European countries until the advent of metrication. It value, which ranged from 3 kg to 12 kg, varied from city to city and also often from commodity to commodity. In the United Kingdom its value is nornally taken as being equal to 14 avoirdupois pounds (6.35kg), though prior to the Second World War it had other values, depending on its use. The stone is in common use in the United Kingdom and Ireland for measuring personal body weight, although it no longer has a legal status in either country other than as a supplementary measure.
es, for example, were traditionally sold in stone and half-stone (14-pound and 7-pound, respectively) increments, but the OED
contains examples including:
The 1772 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica defined the "stone" as follows: "STONE also denotes a certain quantity or weight of some commodities. A stone of beef, in London, is the quantity of eight pounds; in Hertfordshire, twelve pounds; in Scotland sixteen pounds."
In 1661 Royal [Scots] Commission recommended the troy stone be used for weight and that it be kept in the custody of the burgh of Lanark
. The Scots stone was equal to or 7.936 kg. The tron (or local) stone of Edinburgh
, also standardised in 1661, was 16 tron pounds (24 lb 1 oz avoidupois) or 9.996 kg The Scots stone ceased to be used for trade when the Act of 1824 established a uniform system of measure across the whole of the United Kingdom. At the time it ceased to be legal as a primary measure for trade in United Kingdom in 1985, the stone was defined in British legislation, in the table of units for the 'Measurement of mass or weight', as being equal to 14 avoirdupois pounds (about 6.35 kilogram
s).
This table shows a selection of stones from various North European Continental cities:
for "economic, public health, public safety or administrative purposes", though its use as a "supplementary unit" was permitted. The scope of the directive was extended to include all aspects of the EU internal market
as from 1 January 2010.
The 1985 Weights and Measures Act aligned British law with the EU directive. Part of the act was to repeal earlier acts that defined the stone when used as a unit of measure for trade. (British law had previously been silent regarding other uses of the stone)
However the stone remains widely used within the United Kingdom
and in Ireland
as a means of expressing human body weight
. People in these countries normally describe themselves as weighing, for example, "11 stone 4" (11 stones and 4 pounds), rather than "72 kilograms" in most other countries, or "158 pounds" (the conventional way of expressing the same weight in the United States and Canada).
Its widespread everyday use is consistent with the persistence in Britain and Ireland of other imperial units like the foot, the inch
, and the yard, although these have been officially replaced in some uses by metric units. Thus on a National Health Service
website the user may select imperial units.
When used as the unit of measurement, the plural form of stone is correctly stone (as in, "11 stone" or "12 stone 6 pounds"); when describing the units, the correct plural is stones (as in, "Please enter your weight in stones and pounds").
In many sports such as professional boxing, wrestling and horse racing, the stone is used as a means of measuring weight, but in the Olympic Games
kilograms are used to describe the weight divisions in Greco-Roman wrestling
, freestyle wrestling
, boxing
(and judo
).
Units of measurement
A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a physical quantity, defined and adopted by convention and/or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same physical quantity. Any other value of the physical quantity can be expressed as a simple multiple of the unit of...
that was used in many North European countries until the advent of metrication. It value, which ranged from 3 kg to 12 kg, varied from city to city and also often from commodity to commodity. In the United Kingdom its value is nornally taken as being equal to 14 avoirdupois pounds (6.35kg), though prior to the Second World War it had other values, depending on its use. The stone is in common use in the United Kingdom and Ireland for measuring personal body weight, although it no longer has a legal status in either country other than as a supplementary measure.
History (United Kingdom)
The stone was originally used for weighing agricultural commodities. Historically, the number of pounds in a stone varied by commodity, and it was not the same in all times and places even for one commodity. PotatoPotato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
es, for example, were traditionally sold in stone and half-stone (14-pound and 7-pound, respectively) increments, but the OED
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
contains examples including:
| Commodity | Number of Pounds |
|---|---|
| Wool Wool Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits.... |
14, 15, 24 |
| Wax Wax thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents... |
12 |
| Sugar Sugar Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet... and spice Spice A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours... |
8 |
| Beef Beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from bovines, especially domestic cattle. Beef can be harvested from cows, bulls, heifers or steers. It is one of the principal meats used in the cuisine of the Middle East , Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the United States, and is also important in... and Mutton |
8 |
The 1772 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica defined the "stone" as follows: "STONE also denotes a certain quantity or weight of some commodities. A stone of beef, in London, is the quantity of eight pounds; in Hertfordshire, twelve pounds; in Scotland sixteen pounds."
In 1661 Royal [Scots] Commission recommended the troy stone be used for weight and that it be kept in the custody of the burgh of Lanark
Lanark
Lanark is a small town in the central belt of Scotland. Its population of 8,253 makes it the 100th largest settlement in Scotland. The name is believed to come from the Cumbric Lanerc meaning "clear space, glade"....
. The Scots stone was equal to or 7.936 kg. The tron (or local) stone of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, also standardised in 1661, was 16 tron pounds (24 lb 1 oz avoidupois) or 9.996 kg The Scots stone ceased to be used for trade when the Act of 1824 established a uniform system of measure across the whole of the United Kingdom. At the time it ceased to be legal as a primary measure for trade in United Kingdom in 1985, the stone was defined in British legislation, in the table of units for the 'Measurement of mass or weight', as being equal to 14 avoirdupois pounds (about 6.35 kilogram
Kilogram
The kilogram or kilogramme , also known as the kilo, is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram , which is almost exactly equal to the mass of one liter of water...
s).
History (Continental Europe)
Before the advent of metrication, the stone (German: stone; Dutch:Steen) was used in many North European countries. Its value, usually between 3 and 10 kg, varied from city to city and sometimes from commodity to commodity. The number of local "pounds" in a stone also varied from city to city. During the early part of the nineteenth century, states such as the Netherlands (including Belgium) and the South Western Germna states which had redefined their system of measure using the kilogramme des Archives as a reference for weight (mass) also redefined their stone to align it with the the kilogram.This table shows a selection of stones from various North European Continental cities:
| City | Modern Country | Description | Weight of stone in kilograms |
Weight of stone in local pounds |
Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dresden Dresden Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area.... |
Germany | stein | 10.15 | 22 | Before 1841 |
| 10.0 | 20 | From 1841 onwards | |||
| Mecklenburg-Strelitz Mecklenburg-Strelitz Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a duchy and later grand duchy in northern Germany, consisting of the eastern fifth of the historic Mecklenburg region, roughly corresponding with the present-day Mecklenburg-Strelitz district , and the western exclave of the former Bishopric of Ratzeburg in modern... Berlin Berlin Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union... |
Germany | schwerer Stein | 10.296 | 22 | heavy stone |
| leichte Stein | 5.148 | 11 | light stone | ||
| Danzig (Gdańsk Gdansk Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the... ) Königsberg (Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Kaliningrad is a seaport and the administrative center of Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea... ) |
Poland Russia |
grosse Stein | 15.444 | 33 | large stone |
| kleine Stein | 10.296 | 22 | small stone | ||
| Bremen | Germany | Stein Flachs | 9.97 | 20 | stone of flax |
| Stein Wolle und Federn | 4.985 | 10 | stone of wool and feathers | ||
| Oldenburg | Germany | Stein Flachs | 9.692 | 20 | stone of flax |
| Stein Wolle und Federn | 4.846 | 10 | stone of wool and feathers | ||
| Cracow | Poland | Stein | 10.137 | 25 | |
| Osnabrück | Germany | Stein | 4.941 | 10 | |
| Amsterdam | Netherlands | Steen | 3 | 3 | "Metric stone" (after 1817) |
| 3.953 | 8 | Before 1817 | |||
| Karlsruhe | Germany | Stein | 5.00 | 10 | |
| Leipzig, Weimar |
Germany | Stein | 10.287 | 22 | |
| Breslau (Wrocław) | Poland | Stein | 9.732 | 24 | |
| Antwerpen | Belgium | Steen | 3.761 | 8 | |
| Prague Prague Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million... |
Czech Republic | Stein | 10.29 | 20 | |
| Solothurn Solothurn The city of Solothurn is the capital of the Canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. The city also comprises the only municipality of the district of the same name.-Pre-roman settlement:... |
Switzerland | Stein | 5.184 | 10 | |
| Stockholm Stockholm Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area... |
Sweden | Sten | 13.60 | 32 | (32 Skålpund) |
| Warsaw Warsaw Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most... |
Poland | Kamieni | 10.14 | 25 | 25 Funtów |
| Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County... |
Lithuania | Kamieni | 14.992 | 40 | 40 Funtów |
| Vienna Vienna Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre... |
Austria | Stein | 11.20 | 20 |
Current use
The stone was not included in the Directive 80/181/EEC as a unit of measure that could be used within the EECEuropean Economic Community
The European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
for "economic, public health, public safety or administrative purposes", though its use as a "supplementary unit" was permitted. The scope of the directive was extended to include all aspects of the EU internal market
Internal Market (European Union)
The European Union's Internal Market seeks to guarantee the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people – the EU's four freedoms – within the EU's 27 member states.The Internal Market is intended to be conducive to increased competition, increased specialisation, larger...
as from 1 January 2010.
The 1985 Weights and Measures Act aligned British law with the EU directive. Part of the act was to repeal earlier acts that defined the stone when used as a unit of measure for trade. (British law had previously been silent regarding other uses of the stone)
However the stone remains widely used within the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and in Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
as a means of expressing human body weight
Body weight
The term body weight is used in daily English speech as well as in the contexts of biological and medical sciences to describe the mass of an organism's body. Body weight is measured in kilograms throughout the world, although in some countries it is still measured in pounds or stones and pounds...
. People in these countries normally describe themselves as weighing, for example, "11 stone 4" (11 stones and 4 pounds), rather than "72 kilograms" in most other countries, or "158 pounds" (the conventional way of expressing the same weight in the United States and Canada).
Its widespread everyday use is consistent with the persistence in Britain and Ireland of other imperial units like the foot, the inch
Inch
An inch is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot...
, and the yard, although these have been officially replaced in some uses by metric units. Thus on a National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
website the user may select imperial units.
When used as the unit of measurement, the plural form of stone is correctly stone (as in, "11 stone" or "12 stone 6 pounds"); when describing the units, the correct plural is stones (as in, "Please enter your weight in stones and pounds").
In many sports such as professional boxing, wrestling and horse racing, the stone is used as a means of measuring weight, but in the Olympic Games
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
kilograms are used to describe the weight divisions in Greco-Roman wrestling
Greco-Roman wrestling
Greco-Roman wrestling is a style of wrestling that is practised worldwide. It was contested at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and has been included in every edition of the summer Olympics held since 1908. Two wrestlers are scored for their performance in three two-minute periods, which can...
, freestyle wrestling
Freestyle wrestling
Freestyle wrestling is a style of amateur wrestling that is practised throughout the world. Along with Greco-Roman, it is one of the two styles of wrestling contested in the Olympic games. It is, along with track and field, one of the oldest organized sports in history...
, boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
(and judo
Judo
is a modern martial art and combat sport created in Japan in 1882 by Jigoro Kano. Its most prominent feature is its competitive element, where the object is to either throw or takedown one's opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue one's opponent with a grappling maneuver, or force an...
).
See also
- Body weightBody weightThe term body weight is used in daily English speech as well as in the contexts of biological and medical sciences to describe the mass of an organism's body. Body weight is measured in kilograms throughout the world, although in some countries it is still measured in pounds or stones and pounds...
- Conversions of units
- English units
- History of measurementHistory of measurementUnits of measurement were among the earliest tools invented by humans. Primitive societies needed rudimentary measures for numerous tasks such as: constructing dwellings of an appropriate size and shape, fashioning clothing, or bartering food or raw materials....