ounce
Pluralounces
- 1A unit of weight equal to one sixteenth of an avoirdupois pound, or about 28.35 grams.
Weigh out an ounce of ground coffee for each cup.
The block of cheese weighed nearly twelve ounces.
Note
The ounce of everyday weighing goes back to Latin uncia, ultimately from a root meaning "one", which makes it a distant twin of inch. Sixteen of them make the avoirdupois pound. the troy ounce is heavier, about 31.1 grams against 28.35, so it matters which system a figure assumes. The wild-cat ounce is a separate word altogether, from Old French lonce, "lynx".
- 2A unit of liquid volume equal to one sixteenth of a US pint, or about 29.57 milliliters.
The bartender measured one ounce of rum into the shaker.
Each serving contains about six ounces of juice.
Note
Here the ounce stops weighing and starts measuring space. It is properly the fluid ounce, but it is often shortened to plain ounce when the liquid is obvious, as at a bar. Its British counterpart, the imperial fluid ounce, is slightly smaller, about 28.41 milliliters against 29.57, because the imperial pint is split into twenty parts rather than sixteen. Where a measurement was written decides which one it means.
- 3Any small quantity of something; the least little bit.
He showed not an ounce of mercy toward his rivals.
There isn't an ounce of sense in that plan.
Similarbit, shred, scrap, iota, grain
Note
A word for quantity put to work on qualities: an ounce of regret, of mercy, of sense. It thrives in negatives such as not an ounce of and without an ounce of. It often takes even for emphasis, as in didn't feel even an ounce of regret. The image works by naming a tiny weighed amount and then denying that any of it is there.
- 4A unit of weight equal to one twelfth of a troy pound, or 480 grains, about 31.10 grams.
The price of an ounce of gold rose sharply this week.
Each bar contained ten ounces of pure silver.
Note
Here the ounce is heavier but the pound is lighter. A troy ounce is about 31.10 grams against roughly 28.35 for the avoirdupois ounce, yet only twelve make a troy pound, so the troy pound comes to about 373 grams. Its 480 grains tie it to the old grain-based system. Anyone converting between the two systems should expect the ounces and the pounds to differ in opposite directions.
- 5A unit of liquid volume equal to one twentieth of an imperial pint, or about 28.41 milliliters.
In Britain, a pint is divided into twenty ounces rather than sixteen.
He added a single ounce of cream to his afternoon tea.
- 6A snow leopard (Panthera uncia), a large pale-furred wild cat of the high mountains of central and southern Asia.
The ounce melts into the rocks, its pale coat a perfect disguise.
Researchers tracked several ounces across the remote mountain range.
Note
The snow leopard's scientific name, Panthera uncia, gives the cat's English name the Latin spelling of uncia, the ancestor of the unit of weight. The likeness is only one of form. The cat's ounce comes from the lynx word behind the archaic big-cat sense, not from the Roman measure, so the two senses meet in spelling alone.
- 7An onza, an unusually aggressive cougar or jaguarundi described in Mexican folklore.
An ounce was said to drag full-grown cattle into the brush.
Few dared cross the hills where an ounce was rumored to hunt.
Similaronza
Note
In cryptozoology, ounce serves as the English counterpart of onza, a word that shares its lynx ancestry. The legend is Mexican, but the English word has traveled further: James George Frazer's The Golden Bough uses it for a leopard-like creature dreaded by the Indians of Brazil. In older texts, then, the word may point to a South American cat rather than the Mexican onza, and the setting tells which.
Less common meaning
- 8Any of several big wild cats, the lynx and the cougar among them.
An ounce was blamed for the loss of the farmer's sheep.
Halloa! another prey, The nimble Antelope! The ounce is freed; one spring, And his talons are sheath’d in her shoulders, And his teeth are red in her gore.
1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the DestroyerNote
A different word from the unit, with its own history. Old French lonce, "lynx," was divided as if its l were the article, leaving once, which English took as ounce. Behind it stands Greek lúnx, so this ounce is a doublet of lynx. William Wood's New Englands Prospect (1634) equates the Ounce with "the vvilde Cat," and Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) keeps it in verse. In modern prose it gives a period flavor.
Practice
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Origins
It came through Middle English ounce and Middle French once from Latin uncia (a Roman ounce and various similar units), ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *óynos meaning "one." It is a doublet of words like one, inch, and uncia.
It came from Middle French once, from Old French lonce ("lynx"), created by false division when the l was mistaken for the article. This traces back through Italian lonza to Ancient Greek λύγξ (lúnx, "lynx"), and is a doublet of lynx.