Tons of fun: a rant.

The Saddlers Company was fined ten tuns of wine for their part in the great London brawl of 1327. 

And you know how much a tun is, don't you.

No?

Well, a US ton (which is pronounced tun, naturally) is 2,000 lbs (lb is short for pound (yes, I know, but it just is, all right?! Blame the Romans!*) which is about half a kilogram), though a British ton is 2,240lbs. A metric ton (which is a term used in the US and many other parts of the world but not Britain, where it's called a tonne (pronounced, obviously, tun)) is, amusingly, 2,204lbs.

The size of a freight ton depends upon the stuff being shifted, but it can be a unit of either volume or weight. It can be 40 cubic feet (a cubic foot is 0,028 of a cubic metre) or one metric tonne.

But what about a tun?

That's definitely a unit of volume, and is either 252, 256, 240 or 208 wine gallons. A wine gallon is the area of a cylinder of 42 inches height and diameter. An inch is...

...sorry. I seem to lost the will to live.

Ten tuns of wine? 

Ten big barrels.

That'll do.

Word To Use Today: ton or tun. Ton and tun both come from the Old English word tunne.

*lb is short for libra.