OT: getting stone-d, was Re: [LMB] Miles's exact height?

[gpw at uniserve.com]

Quoting louann at millerdome.com:

> To a native speaker of UK English, is stone the normal method of giving
> any _other_ weight besides human beings?

Not normal, but I have on a couple of occassions seen specifications
for industrial goods in stone.  I was less than thrilled since I
generally think in metric.

> Also is there a minimum age/weight of person below which it would sound
> silly to use stone? E.g. "The baby was growing so fast we were afraid he'd
> be a full stone when he was born," or "That child must be three stone
> already, he's all muscle."

It is important to note that weighing with stone is a 2 radix system -
stone and pounds.  Eg I currently weigh
80kg = 176 pounds = 12 stone, 8 pounds.

You can easily find bathroom scales that show all three.

Same thing for height - native UK speakers almost always use feet,inches
rather than cm.

Geoffrey