tael
Pluraltaels
- 1A traditional unit of weight used in China and elsewhere in East Asia, roughly 40 grams, and standardized in mainland China as exactly 50 grams.
Comparable to the ounce in everyday use, but rooted in East Asian markets.
A single tael of saffron sold for an astonishing price at the spice market.
Gold buyers in the region still quote prices by the tael rather than by the gram.
Note
The English name is not Chinese at all. It came through Portuguese tael from Malay tahil, and tahil survives in English as its doublet. Because the word was borrowed for a weight found across eastern Asia, it names several near-equal standards rather than one. Mainland China's metric tael of exactly 50 grams sits beside older values near 40 grams, so a tael in one place need not match a tael in another.
- 2A unit of money whose value equaled the corresponding weight in silver, used in parts of Asia.
Like measuring a price in gold bars rather than counting dollar bills.
The debt was finally settled at three hundred taels, paid out in weighed silver.
A merchant in good standing could borrow a tael against next season's harvest.
Note
Money counted by the scale: a sum in taels was worth whatever the weight unit of silver came to, so the reckoning was in metal rather than in a fixed coin. That is why the natural collocation is taels of silver, and why sums are spoken of as weighed out. Since the weight itself varied from place to place, so did the value of the money built on it.
- 3Known as the leung, a traditional unit of weight legally defined as one sixteenth of a catty (kan, 斤), equal to about 0.0378 kilograms.
The dried mushrooms were priced by the tael at the dispensary counter.
Each catty of the herb divides neatly into sixteen taels for retail sale.
Note
Hong Kong keeps its own reckoning. Here the tael is the local leung, counted sixteen to the catty, and its legal value of 0.0377993638 kilograms is not the round 50 grams of the mainland metric tael. When a Hong Kong price or recipe gives taels, convert with this figure, or count sixteen to the catty, rather than assuming metric grams.
Practice
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Origin
From Portuguese "tael", from Malay "tahil". It is a doublet of "tahil".