Hundredweight

The abbreviation cwt. combines c for the Latin centum, a hundred, with wt for weight. In most of the United States, by practice and by law, the hundredweight is 100 pounds and the matching short ton is 2,000 pounds. In Britain the legal hundredweight is 112 pounds and the long ton 2,240.

Colonial records and goods imported from Britain may follow the 112 pound hundredweight. Weights were often written in hundredweights, quarters and pounds, with 4 quarters of 28 pounds to the British hundredweight.