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The abbreviation “lbs” for pounds comes from the Latin word “libra”, meaning balance, and is also used for the British currency. Other word origins include “kibosh” from Gaelic and “OMG” from a British admiral’s memoir. “Tragedy” comes from a Greek word meaning “song of the goat.”
While the word pounds is an English word for a unit of weight, its common abbreviation of pounds goes against normal protocol because it doesn’t share the letters of the word it represents. This is because the English word takes its abbreviation from the Latin origins of the word. Lbs is short for pounds because it comes from the Latin word (and astrological sign) libra, meaning balance or balance. The connection between pounds and scales is also thought to come from the phrase libra pondo, or “a pound in weight.” The Latin libra is also applied to the word pound other than weight: it is the origin of the abbreviation of pound in the sense of the British currency (£).
Read more about the origins of the words:
The word kibosh, used in the phrase “put the kibosh on it”, is thought to derive from the Gaelic phrase meaning “death cap”, which was worn by executioners.
A British admiral, John Arbuthnot “Jacky” Fisher, is credited with the first use of “OMG” as an abbreviation for “Oh my God.” He used the abbreviation in his 1917 memoir, written when he was 75 years old.
A Greek word meaning “song of the goat” is thought to underlie the word tragedy.
