Where I live, we don't buy bread by weight
... and when we do, it's usually used adjectivally.
Ali Katt bought a half pound box of liquorice allsorts and a half pound bag of jelly babies.
As a compound adjective, shouldn't "half-pound" be hyphenated?
Where I live, we don't buy bread by weight
Ah, but what about pound cake?:eyes:
We rarely use "a half pound" in BrE.
For the benefit of learners:
1. That's cake, not bread.
2. It got its name because the original recipe called for a pound each of flour, butter, sugar and eggs! That would result in a cake that weighs a lot more than a pound!
If I remember my physics correctly, the law of conservation of mass says that cake would weigh the same as the sum of its ingredients, so not less than four pounds.