Weighty words

Acre

An acre describes an area of land and comes for the old English word aecar, meaning a ploughed field. It was the area a team of oxen could plough in one day. In the UK in 1824, an acre was set as 4,840 square yards.

Celsius
A temperature scale invented in 1742by Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius. A Celsius degree is 1/100th of the difference between the freezing and boiling points of water (0 degree and 100 degree).

Fahrenheit
This temperature scale was devised by German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit. On this scale the freezing point of water is 32 degree.

Foot
Foot originally meant the average length of an adult foot, and has been used since ancient times. Before France invented the metric system, the French foot was based on the length of the Emperor Charlemagne’s foot.

Gram/kilogram
Gram comes from the same ancient Greek word that gave us grammar, and means a marked-off division. A kilogram is 1,000 grams; kilo comes from the Greek chilioi, meaning one thousand