Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A unit of troy weight equal to 24 grains, 1/20 of a troy ounce or about 1.555 grams.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Originally, a weight equal to that of the Anglo-Norman silver penny, 22 ½ grains, or of a Tower pound; now, and since the eighteenth year of Henry VIII., when the use of the Tower pound was forbidden, a weight of 24 grains, or of a troy ounce. Abbreviated dwt.
- noun A proportional measure of one-twelfth, used in stating the fineness of silver. See
carat .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A troy weight containing twenty-four grains, or the twentieth part of a troy ounce; 1.555 grams. It is abbreviated dwt or pwt. It was anciently the weight of a silver penny, whence the name.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A former unit of
mass equal to 24grains , or 1/20th of atroy ounce
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a unit of apothecary weight equal to 24 grains
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word pennyweight.
Examples
-
Gold is measured in troy ounces, often paid based on pennyweight, which is 1/20th of a troy ounce.
ScrippsNews 2009
-
I asked Papi why they are called tenpenny, eightpenny, an' sixpenny darters, an' he said it was 'cause they looked like nails an' that nails used to be sold by the pennyweight.
The Celebrated Jumping Flippit of Tau-Ceti IV Hugh Barlow 2011
-
The trees, burdened with the last infinitesimal pennyweight of snow their branches could hold, stood in absolute petrifaction.
Chapter IV 2010
-
Equilibrium, however, was restored by the addition of a pennyweight and five grains to the opposite side.
-
But gold being worth 80/90 ths. of a dollar, per pennyweight, here; a guinea, if valued at 4 60/90 ths. dollars, should weigh only 5 dwts. 6 gr.
gillpolack: Today I've been looking into how currenc gillpolack 2009
-
But gold being worth 80/90 ths. of a dollar, per pennyweight, here; a guinea, if valued at 4 60/90 ths. dollars, should weigh only 5 dwts. 6 gr.
Even in a little thing gillpolack 2009
-
The company sends people bags, then people fill the bags with their gold jewelry and mail them back, and then the company sends the customers some tiny amount of money pennyweight or even less.
Nick Mamatas' Journal nihilistic_kid 2009
-
Shall we say, that the economical mother disburses so much earth and so much fire, by weight and meter, to make a man, and will not add a pennyweight, though a nation is perishing for a leader?
Representative Men 2006
-
The Junior Ring Ball was this weekend, when all of the Juniors here get their school rings, which are usually pretty big, up to 21-22 pennyweight, or so I've heard.
Archive 2004-04-01 Andrew 2004
-
The Junior Ring Ball was this weekend, when all of the Juniors here get their school rings, which are usually pretty big, up to 21-22 pennyweight, or so I've heard.
worlds in a grain of sand Andrew 2004
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.