catty
nounEtymology From Malay kati, from Tamil கட்டி (kaṭṭi).
1
Informal A (unit of) weight used in China which is metricated in Mainland China as exactly 0.5 kg, and approximately 0.6 kg for other places.
- 16 Mess, make a Tale, which here is 20 s. English, 5 Tale make a Bancal, a weight so called, and 20 Bancal make a Catty, another weight.1699, Captain William Dampier, A new voyage round the world, Volume 1:
- Transparent yellow pieces are the best; the price is from eight to fourteen dollars per catty, according to size and quality.1847, Robert Montgomery Martin, China; Political, Commercial, and Social, volume 2, James Madden, page 124:
3 more examples
- In China, festivals are important occasions, when edibles and other gifts are presented and exchanged. In the few years of its existence, the factory has made it a practice to present at various festival times to each worker 10 dumplings, ½ catty of "mid-Autumn cake," ¼ catty of dried plums, ½ catty of sugar, [and] 10 cents for making "la-pa" porridge, a food to be taken on the eighth day of the last month in the year.1951, Wilbert E. Moore, “The Search for New Opportunities”, in Industrialization and Labor: Social Aspects of Economic Development, New York: Russell & Russell, sourced from Sung-Ho Lin, Factory Workers in Tangku (Peiping: Social Research Department, China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture, 1928), p. 33., published 1965, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 85–86:
- The 130,000 mou of cotton fields in (Pailichou) district of Chihchiang County have produced 17 million catties of cotton seed, and 2.5 million catties of ginned cotton have been sold to the state.1971 October 21 [1971 October 11], “Hupeh Cotton Production”, in Daily Report: People's Republic of China, volume I, number 204, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, sourced from Wuhan Hupeh Provincial Service, translation of original in Mandarin, →ISSN, →OCLC, People's Republic of China: Central-South Region, page D 3:
- To limit team members' consumption, it issued food stamps to the villagers and allowed everyone to eat one catty of rice a day.2009, Huaiyin Li, Village China Under Socialism and Reform: A Micro-History, 1948-2008, Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 94: