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

[Tracy MacShane]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2006 21:25:11 +0100, "Phil Boswell" <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/08/06, louann at millerdome.com <louann at millerdome.com> wrote:
>> At 09:01 AM 8/2/2006 +0100, Derry Thompson wrote:
>> To a native speaker of UK English, is stone the normal method of giving
>> any _other_ weight besides human beings? E.g. "I don't think that
>> ultra-compact hybrid car weighs over forty stone, I'd be afraid to drive
>> it on the M1."
> 
> Animals of comparable weight to a human being. Anything from a
> reasonably large dog/giant cat up to quite a big pig. Past that we
> start talking fractions of a ton...and not a tonne you will note ;-)
> 
>> 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."
> 
> Both of those sound fine, as confirmed with the SOU. Pounds-only is
> for less than a whole stone.
> 

Wot Phil said. Although, of course, with babies being born *these days*, the parents-to-be would be generally talking kilos, unless they were extremely old-fashioned or having to translate for mum and dad.

I think all inanimate objects would be referred to in kilos as well, unless you're granddad's age. There might be a few exceptions like old cars, like my 1970 Holden, which is just over one-and-a-half short (US) tons, but it's just *under* 1.5 TONNES. Really, for general use, there is bugger-all difference between tons and tonnes, especially if you're a UK/NZ/AU type who is used to long tons in any case (since they're almost identical - one long ton is 1016 kilos. A short ton is nearly 100kg less.).