Abbreviation for hundredweight, a unit of weight equal to either 100 pounds (short hundredweight in the U.S.) or 112 pounds (long hundredweight in Britain).
From Middle English 'hundredweight,' eventually abbreviated to 'cwt.' by the 18th century, with 'c' from the Roman numeral for 100 and 'wt.' from weight.
The abbreviation 'cwt' is wonderfully strange—the 'c' comes from the Roman numeral for 100, which is why it doesn't match the letters in 'hundredweight' at all!
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