← All sayings
Origin documented
“Worth its weight in gold”
What it means
Extremely valuable.
Where it comes from
Weighed in which pound, though? Gold is measured in troy, at 5,760 grains to the pound. Almost everything else is avoirdupois, at 7,000. English merchants ran both systems side by side for centuries.
How sure are we?
The comparison is ancient and appears in many languages. What is distinctly English is that the two competing pounds made the phrase quietly ambiguous to anyone in the trade.