The expression "Forage for food".

[GoesStation]

Right. You've explained some of this to me before, but I'm still not too clear on the US and UK differences. Is it only measures of volume that are different? Do you know why this is? Weights are the same, right? (Except for that we use stones here whereas I believe you don't?) And what do you call the measures if not 'Imperial'?

(Sorry to stray completely off topic (I blame SoothingDave!), but I believe the OP question has been answered.)

I'll try to come back and answer these questions when I have time to do them justice. Unfortunately, I can't right now.

 

[probus]

Right. You've explained some of this to me before, but I'm still not too clear on the US and UK differences. Is it only measures of volume that are different? Do you know why this is? Weights are the same, right? (Except for that we use stones here whereas I believe you don't?) And what do you call the measures if not 'Imperial'?
)

Let me weigh in here:-D. The units used in the USA are known as customary units, and occaaionally American customary units if ambiguity is feared. Weights are not the same as in the UK. To the extent that pounds and ounces avoirdupois are still used in the UK, those would be the same. But the tons are different. Unless the rarely used long ton is specified an American ton is 2,000 pounds. I believe the old British ton was twenty stone or 2,280 pounds. That's pretty close to the metric tonne of 1,000 kilos.

Here in Canada we officially went metric long ago but pounds and ounces have survived for food, prices of which are always displayed and advertised in dollars per pound rather than per kilo. It's a bad situation because cashiers have to remember that $0.99 per pound is $2.18 per kilo, and so on for $0.79, $1.29 etc. Mistakes are inevitable and common.

I have no information on how the US gallon came to be five sixths of the Imperial gallon. Until we went metric Canada used the Imperial gallon, and the discrepancy in the size of gallons was a real nuisance to Canada/US trade, as well as to aviators.

 

[GoesStation]

Here in Canada we officially went metric long ago but pounds and ounces have survived for food, prices of which are always displayed and advertised in dollars per pound rather than per kilo.

I'm in Quebec at the moment (leaving tomorrow morning, alas!) and just returned from a restaurant that listed a 12po (12") burrito and a 10po torta on its menu. Building areas in Quebec are still advertised in square feet, and a younger woman friend who asked how tall I am not only understood when I responded in feet and inches but rattled off her own height (an inch and a half less than mine, to my surprise — I thought we were the same height) the same way without any hesitation.

I didn't see any pounds or ounces at the Jean Talon Market in Montreal. Everything was in kilos.

But metrification, which was just getting underway when I lived in Toronto in the mid Seventies, appears to be much more widely applied here now than it is in Britain.

 

[probus]

Yes, I forgot about that. Although we are officially metric, most people still do their height in feet and inches and their weight in pounds. But the traditional units are doomed to fade away. My grandchildren, aged five to twelve, have barely heard of them.

 

[Rover_KE]

(Sorry to stray completely off topic (I blame SoothingDave!), but I believe the OP question has been answered.)

Yes — I've moved it.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Although the posts above have nothing to do with the original topic but we get to learn some extra on the differences in British and American English, culture and systems.