Most of the time abbreviations are pretty intuitive, or are supposed to be. The abbreviation for a US state, for example, is designed to be recognizable, so for Massachusetts we get “MA,” and for Texas it’s “TX.” The abbreviation for US dollars is the straightforward “USD.” “In” stands for “inch” and “tsp” means “teaspoon.” It’s all evidence that abbreviations are basically meant to be easy shorthand expressions.
So what happened with “pounds,” the abbreviation for which is “lb” — two letters that don’t even appear in the word itself? The answer, as they say, is in the stars. Well, ok, it’s not exactly in the stars, but if you put it a certain way (which would be the way I’m about to put it), there are some stars involved.
Millennia ago people dreamed up images and applied them to groups of stars that we still call “constellations” or “zodiac signs.” The images have always seemed like quite a stretch to me, but there are at least a couple of them in the northern hemisphere that are recognizable. One that’s harder to spot, though, is Libra — the zodiac sign that’s a balance scale. It’s hard to spot because unlike Orion, which has three stars that look like they’re in a straight line, or some others that feature particularly bright stars, Libra doesn’t have any bright stars at all. They’re all about the same brightness — in other words, they’re balanced, which is what Libra is taken to mean.
Now, a scale like the one in Libra is a good way to weigh things, but only when you have two things. You put one in each pan, and when they’re the same weight, they balance. Because of that, the word “libra” in Latin has to do with weight — in fact, it meant a measure of weight that we’d translate as…wait for it… “pound.” The actual word “weight” in Latin is “pondo” — hence the Latin phrase “libra pondo,” which means “pound weight.”
You might have noticed already that the natural abbreviation for “libra” would be “lb,” and you’re exactly right; that’s where “lb” comes from. It was in the 1500s that the “pound” as a unit of weight came into use in England, and it was called the “libra pondo.” The abbreviation “lb” showed up immediately, as nobody wanted to have to say or write “libra pondo” all the time. Don’t ask me why they didn’t use “lp” instead.
Speaking of abbreviations and pounds, by the way, the abbreviation for the British pound (the currency version of “pound”) is £. It looks like a fancy letter “L,” and that’s exactly what it is; it stands for, once again, “Libra.” Currency was at one time measured (using a balance scale) as a weight or quantity of some precious metal. A millennia ago in England, the precious metal was silver, and a “pound” (the currency) was a pound (the weight) of silver. That’s why the British pound is still sometimes referred to as a “pound sterling.” It was the value of a pound of sterling silver.
“Sterling,” by the way, probably comes from a reference to a Norman coin like a penny, many of which had a star stamped on them. If that was the case, then “sterling” is derived from “star,” which at the time could have been spelled “staer” or “ster.” Another possibility is that “sterling” refers to coins made by “Easterlings,” which meant somebody “from the east.” They were probably talking about what is today Germany. Nobody really knows exactly where “sterling” really came from, but that’s not surprising. After all, where does money really come from? (Yeah, I know. The ATM — but there’s an abbreviation that makes sense!)
