Words with Webster: Ounce

We have just one fun Friday feature for you today. Today’s post is all on Real Cat Webster, who has a wild word to share.

Words with Webster

Hi, everybody! It’s me, Real Cat Webster. Welcome to Words with Me. Today’s word is “ounce.” If you missed yesterday’s post about heraldry, you might be wondering what an ounce, as in “16 ounces in a pound,” has to do with cats. Well, that’s not the kind of ounce I’m talking about. My favorite dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s, says that an ounce is also

1. archaic :  any of various moderate-sized wildcats (as the ocelot or lynx)
2. snow leopard
3. archaic :  cheetah
4. a heraldic representation of a leopard

That last meaning is how we heard about this word. You know what’s kind of weird, though? The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t mention that meaning; it just says that an ounce is a “medium-sized member of the cat family” or snow leopard (the scientific name of which is Panthera uncia).

It’s been a while since we’ve gotten to share a Shakespeare quote, but there is one for this word. Good ol’ Will!

Be it Ounce, or Catte, or Beare, Pard, or Boare with bristled haire. (1600, Midsummer Night's Dream ii. ii. 36)  

This lynx could be called an ounce, although that's kind of archaic.

That quote refers to the "medium-sized cat" meaning, by the way. Here’s one for the "snow leopard" meaning, but it’s not from Shakespeare:

We will, therefore, call that animal of the panther kind, which is less than the panther, and with a longer tail, the ounce... (O. Goldsmith, 1774, A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature III.254)

“Ounce” has been around since about 1300, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. It came from the Old French word once, which used to be lonce, meaning “lynx.” That word came from the Latin lyncea (“lynx-like”), which was from the Latin lynx, which was from the Greek lyngx. The “L” at the beginning lonce may have been dropped along the way because people thought it was an article instead of part of the word.

And just in case you’re wondering, the word referring to a unit of weight also entered English in the early 14th century, but it comes from the Latin uncia, meaning “one-twelfth part.” (The Troy system of weights has 12 ounces in a pound, instead of the 16 we’re more used to.) The English word “inch” has the same origin.

This snow leopard could also be called an ounce.

And if you have been paying really good attention, you probably noticed that the species name of the snow leopard is uncia, which is the same as “one-twelfth part” in Latin. But that’s not what it means in the snow leopard’s name. There, uncia is a Latinized version of the Old French once. So it’s really a Latinized version of an Old French word that came from Latin.

Confusing, no?

Image credits

Photos via Adobe Stock.