hundredweight

noun

hun·​dred·​weight ˈhən-drəd-ˌwāt 

-dərd-ˌwāt

plural hundredweight or hundredweights

1

: a unit of weight equal to 100 pounds

called also short hundredweight

see Weights and Measures Table

2

British : a unit of weight equal to 112 pounds

called also long hundredweight

Examples of hundredweight in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But a key measure of pricing strength, known in the sector as average revenue per hundredweight excluding fuel surcharges, jumped 8.9% from a year earlier and expanded from the second quarter, signaling carriers are getting higher prices even as freight volumes retreat. —Paul Berger, WSJ, 31 Oct. 2023

Barstow’s Longview Farm In the early 2000s, when the milk market was crashing, the farm was getting $12 per 100 pounds of milk when the break even was about $22 per hundredweight. —Hannah Nguyen, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Feb. 2023

However, sweet corn tends to come from Washington state, with 15.4 million hundredweight, then Minnesota with approximately 15.3 million, before dropping down to Wisconsin with about 10 million. —Rachel Chang, Travel + Leisure, 11 Nov. 2021

But the best repository for the history of the Revolution was the Hoover Institution, which was always inviting me to come and do some more work there, and sending photocopies of materials by the hundredweight. —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, WSJ, 1 Oct. 2020

Revenue per hundredweight, a measure of pricing strength, rose 2.3% in August from the previous year, excluding fuel surcharges. —Jennifer Smith, WSJ, 3 Sep. 2020

Front-month rough rice futures on the CME traded as high as 23.565 cents per hundredweight Friday before giving up some of that gain in recent sessions. —Kirk Maltais, WSJ, 10 June 2020

In the 2019 legislative session, Gov. Larry Hogan devoted $1.5 million to cover one year’s worth of premiums for farmers that wanted to buy into the program at the highest level — $9.50 per hundredweight of milk, according to Connelly. —Mary Grace Keller, baltimoresun.com/maryland/carroll, 1 Oct. 2019

Other payments were $8 per head for hogs and 12 cents per hundredweight for milk. —Washington Post, 3 July 2019

Word History

First Known Use

1577, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing hundredweight

• long hundredweight
• short hundredweight

Kids Definition

hundredweight

noun

hun·​dred·​weight ˈhən-drə-ˌdwāt 

-dər-ˌdwāt

plural hundredweight or hundredweights

1

: a unit of weight equal to 100 pounds (about 45.4 kilograms)

called also short hundredweight

see measure

2

British : a unit of weight equal to 112 pounds (about 50.8 kilograms)

called also long hundredweight