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Pennyweight, a Troy weight, containing 24 grains, each grain being equal to a grain of wheat from the middle of the ear, well dried. Twenty pennyweights make one ounce Troy weight.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.
Pen"ny*weight` (?), n.
A troy weight containing twenty-four grains, or the twentieth part of an ounce; as, a pennyweight of gold or of arsenic. It was anciently the weight of a silver penny, whence the name.
© Webster 1913.
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