Convert Pounds to Ounces

About converting Pounds to Ounces

Pounds (lb) and Ounces (oz) are both units of weight & mass, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Pounds figure by 16. Ten Pounds comes to 160 Ounces, and a hundred works out at 1,600 Ounces.

Rule of thumb: going from Pounds to Ounces multiplies, so the figure always grows — one Pound is already 16 Ounces. If your answer came out smaller, you have the conversion the wrong way round.

What is a Pound?

The pound descends from the Roman libra pondo, "a pound by weight", which is why English took pound from the second word and the abbreviation lb from the first. The version used here is the avoirdupois pound, from an Old French phrase meaning "goods of weight" — the merchants’ system for ordinary bulk trade. A separate troy pound survived for precious metals and was never the same size. The 1959 international yard and pound agreement finally fixed the avoirdupois pound at exactly 0.45359237 kilograms across the English-speaking world, ending a long tail of national variants.

What is an Ounce?

The ounce here is the avoirdupois ounce, one sixteenth of a pound, and the qualifier matters. The troy ounce used to price gold and silver is noticeably heavier, so a "one ounce" gold coin is not an ounce of anything else — a confusion that has cost people real money. Muddier still is the fluid ounce, which measures volume rather than mass and differs between the US and the UK. The name comes from the Latin uncia, a twelfth part: it was a twelfth of the Roman libra, and the move to sixteen ounces to the pound came later.

To put both in perspective: a pound is roughly a loaf of bread, while a slice of sandwich bread weighs about an ounce.

The converter above updates as you type, and the table lists common values for quick reference. Need the opposite direction? Use the Ounces to Pounds converter, or browse all Weight & Mass converters.