There is no letter L or B in the word pound. The abbreviation comes from a different language entirely. Rome weighed goods in a unit called the libra pondo, literally a pound by weight. Libra was the unit. Pondo came from pondus, meaning weight. English speakers kept one half of that phrase and the abbreviation of the other. We say pound, from pondo. We write lb, from libra. The libra was itself a balance, the twin-pan scales that underwrote Roman trade. One weighed roughly 329 grams and divided into twelve unciae. That twelfth-part word did remarkable work of its own: - uncia became ounce, the twelfth of a Roman pound - uncia also became inch, the twelfth of a foot - libra became the Italian and Turkish lira - libra became the zodiac sign Libra, still drawn as a set of scales - libra became the pound sterling sign, an ornate capital L struck through with a bar The bar is the tell. Medieval scribes crossed a letter to mark a contraction, and older printing shows the weight abbrevia...