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

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

equal to 40 ''funt'' (, Russian pound). Since 1899 it is set to approximately 16.38

kilogram The kilogram (also kilogramme) is the unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol kg. It is a widely used measure in science, engineering and commerce worldwide, and is often simply called a kilo colloquially ...

s (36.11 pounds). It was used in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...

, and

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

. ''Pood'' was first mentioned in a number of 12th-century documents. Unlike '' funt'', which came at least in the 14th century from gmh, phunt, orv, пудъ (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 the force acting on the object due to gravity. Some standard textbooks define weight as a Euclidean vector, vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weigh ...

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

Matryona's Place ''Matryona's Place'' (russian: link=no, Матрёнин двор), sometimes translated as ''Matryona's Home'' (or House), is a novella written in 1959 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. First published by Aleksandr Tvardovsky in the Russian literary jo ...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...

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 many types of exercises, including Ballistic Training, ballist ...

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." (russian: Человека узнаешь, когда с ним пуд соли съешь.)

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 * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

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

hat could be measured A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...

in ''poods''')

References

{{reflist

External links

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