Stone (unit)

This article is about the European unit of mass. For Asian uses of 'stone', see Picul. For the material made of rock, see Rock (geology). For other uses of the word "Stone", see Stone (disambiguation).

Stone
A 16th-century bronze 1-stone weight emblazoned with the English coat of arms
General information
Unit systemBritish imperial
Unit ofMass
Abbreviationst

The stone or stone weight (abbreviation: st.)[1] is an English and British imperial unit of mass equal to 14 avoirdupois pounds (6.35 kg).[nb 1] The stone continues in customary use in the United Kingdom and Ireland for body weight.

England and other Germanic-speaking countries of Northern Europe formerly used various standardised "stones" for trade, with their values ranging from about 5 to 40 local pounds (2.3 to 18.1 kg) depending on the location and objects weighed. With the advent of metrication, Europe's various "stones" were superseded by or adapted to the kilogram from the mid-19th century onward.

  1. ^ "stone", Concise Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1964.
  2. ^ United States. National Bureau of Standards (1959). Research Highlights of the National Bureau of Standards. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards. p. 13.
  3. ^ National Bureau of Standards, Appendix 8 Archived 2009-01-18 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ^ National Physical Laboratory, P. H. Bigg & al. Re-determination of the values of the imperial standard pound and of its parliamentary copies in terms of the international kilogramme during the years 1960 and 1961
  5. ^ Sizes.com: pound avoirdupois.
  6. ^ Weights and Measures Act of 1963.


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