this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Only criticism is the use of non-metric weight units when everything else is SI-based.
Wikipedia currently says:
So, technically, a pound is a metric weight, only a niche one whose use may or may not be permitted by local regulations.
Similar is true* of the inch, which is defined as precisely 25.4 millimetres.
* The US, UK and a handful of others collectively signed this into their respective laws in 1959. You might think we don't use the pound in the UK any more but it still shows up often in informal situations. Ditto inches and feet.
That's similar to saying "Auf Wiedersehen" translated to English is "until I see you again", therefore "Auf Wiedersehen" is technically English. Just because there's a recognised translation to a thing, that doesn't make it that thing.
It's not a recognised translation- it's the definition.
If we're going to split hairs then while it's defined in terms of metric units, it doesn't scale with prefixes and factors of 10, so it can't be an S.I. unit.
You're right, the imperial units are not S.I. units, but each (most?) imperial unit is defined by an S.I. unit.
The other way around maybe, that is, an English word becoming technically foreign because we decide that we are going to write its definition in a different language in the dictionary.
It wouldn't make sense to do that though, which kind of breaks the analogy. Unless you count words borrowed wholesale because we didn't have that word, and those definitions were written in a foreign language first.
As it is "one pound" now translates exactly to "nought point four five three five nine two three seven kilograms" where it didn't before 1959. "kilogram" is one of those foreign borrowings.