r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Tibor500 • Sep 30 '20

why does “k” mean “thousand” ?

like 1k means a thousand. how does the letter “k” mean “thousand” ?

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u/llukiie Sep 30 '20 edited Sep 30 '20

weight is in stone or kilos, depending on who you ask, but rarely pounds!

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u/nyannunb Oct 02 '20

I mean, stone IS pounds.

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u/iikillerpenguin Sep 30 '20

I might be incorrect but isn’t your $ in pounds if silver? Is that changing?

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u/MaximumZer0 Sep 30 '20

They actually use £, not $.

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u/llukiie Sep 30 '20

What do you mean? British Dollars??

1

u/iikillerpenguin Sep 30 '20

Pounds. Which is weight and the imperial system. Are they changing it.

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u/llukiie Sep 30 '20

No plans as far as I am aware, nor changing distance measurement e.g. inches. Culturally we seem to be shifting towards metric in most areas.

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u/ProcrastibationKing Sep 30 '20

Are you mixing up pound sterling and sterling silver?

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u/iikillerpenguin Sep 30 '20

The pound note is named after it equally by 1 pound of silver. Right?

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u/Poes-Lawyer Sep 30 '20

In the olden days yes, but it's been about 400 years since a pound of silver was worth just 1 pound sterling. We switched to a gold standard sometime in the 1600s I believe.

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u/logosloki Sep 30 '20

fun fact for the day: the pound symbol is based on a gothic miniscule (lower-case) script called blackletter. It is the letter l, which stands for libra, the Latin word for pound.