''Pood'' ( rus, пуд, r=pud, p=put, plural: or ) is a unit of

mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

equal to 40 ''funt'' (,

Russian pound The pound or pound-mass is a Units of measurement, unit of mass used in both the imperial units, British imperial and United States customary units, United States customary systems of measurement. Various definitions have been used; the most c ...

). Since 1899 it is set to approximately 16.38

kilogram The kilogram (also spelled kilogramme) is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand grams. It has the unit symbol kg. The word "kilogram" is formed from the combination of the metric prefix kilo- (m ...

s (36.11 pounds). It was used in

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

, and

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. ''Pood'' was first mentioned in a number of 12th-century documents. Unlike '' funt'', which came at least in the 14th century from , (formerly written * ) is a much older borrowing from Late Latin "pondo", from Classical "pondus".

Use in the past and present

Together with other units of

weight In science and engineering, the weight of an object is a quantity associated with the gravitational force exerted on the object by other objects in its environment, although there is some variation and debate as to the exact definition. Some sta ...

of the Imperial Russian weight measurement system, the USSR officially abolished the ''pood'' in 1924. The term remained in widespread use until at least the 1940s. In his 1953 short story " Matryona's Place",

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...

presents the ''pood'' as still in use amongst the Khrushchev-era Soviet peasants. Its usage is preserved in modern Russian in certain specific cases, e.g., in reference to sports weights, such as traditional Russian

kettlebell In weight training, a kettlebell is a cast-iron or Steel casting, cast-steel ball with a handle attached to the top, resembling a cannonball with a handle. It is used to perform a range of Exercise, exercises; primarily Ballistic training, ball ...

s, cast in multiples and fractions of 16 kg (which is ''pood'' rounded to metric units). For example, a 24 kg kettlebell is commonly referred to as "one-and-half ''pood'' kettlebell" (). It is also sometimes used when reporting the amounts of bulk agricultural production, such as grains or potatoes. An old Russian proverb reads, "You know a man when you have eaten a ''pood'' of salt with him." ()

Idioms in Slavic languages

In modern colloquial Russian, the expression () – 'a hundred ''poods'',' an intentional play on the foreign "hundred percent" – imparts the ponderative sense of overwhelming weight to the declarative sentence it is added to. The generic meaning of "very serious" or "absolutely sure"English-Russian-English dictionary of slang, jargon and Russian names. 2012 has almost supplanted its original meaning of "very heavy weight." The adjective and the adverb are also used to convey the same sense of certainty. The word is also used in

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

idiomatically or as a proverb (with the original/strict meaning commonly forgotten): (Polish for 'unsupportable boredoms', literally 'boredoms hat could be measuredin ''poods''')

References

{{reflist

External links

Conversion factors from pood to other units of mass (contemporary and ancient)
Obsolete units of measurement Units of mass