Hundred (thing)

The surprisingly complicated thing that is "a hundred".

"A hundred" isn't complicated, surely? Oh, you would be surprised. The word originates with Proto-Indo-European *chtom and came to us through proto-German, becoming at first Old English hund.¹ Now for the surprising point. There is evidence that this "hundred" did not mean 100, but rather 120. This usage is sill in evidence today if you look at the hundredweight, which in the UK is 120 pounds, as opposed to the US customary hundredweight, which is just 100. The smaller number is sometimes referred to as a short hundred, the bigger one, a long hundred, likewise the hundredweight. Even more confusing, when I was a lad, a hundredweight was taught to me as 112 pounds, being eight stone (a stone being fourteen pounds).

The word "hundred", then, is hund-red (a count of 100 or 120). it is quite likely that many people in ages past used bases other than 10, 120 being usefully divisible by many numbers, notably 20 and 12. The Brits, of course, continued to use these bases (12 pennies in a shilling, twenty shillings in a pound!) in their currency right up to February 1971, when the Pound Sterling was finally decimalised in line with most of the rest of the world. How sensible it all seems now, but a pain in the arse at the time.

C-Dawg says re Hundred: And the troy weight system has factors of 12 and 20.

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226 base 10! for Brevity Quest 2025