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Glite Dictionary
pennyweight

pennyweight

1 9.9
An old small unit of weight used for measuring gold and silver equal to 24 grains
  • noun
  • /ˈpɛniˌweɪt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : pennyweight
  • In jewelry making, understanding that there are 20 pennyweight in a troy ounce can help avoid mistakes.

Examples

  • A gold ring weighs 12 pennyweight, which is about half an ounce.

  • After an hour, she barely had a grain of gold, much less a pennyweight.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • Two pennyweight short of four ounces.

    Paint Your Wagon (1969)

  • 20 pennyweights is 1 ounce.

    Blog text (9)

  • When measuring precious metals, jewelers often prefer to use pennyweight for its precision.

How Heavy

kilogram
  • Specialized
28 1.0
pound
∞ 1.0
ounce
  • Archaic
27 4.1
pennyweight
  • Specialized
1 9.9

Surface Forms

pennyweight singular
pennyweights plural

Morphology

pennyweight = penny + weight (semi-transparent) = penny + weight

The compound clearly combines 'penny' and 'weight' indicating a weight related to a penny, but the precise standardized unit value (24 grains) is a historical technical detail not inferable from the parts alone.

Etymology

Pennyweight comes from penny ('a small coin') and weight ('how heavy something is'); it first meant the weight of one old penny coin, so it became a small unit for measuring gold and silver and today equals 24 'grains'.