Help! Is it 6 foot tall or 6 feet tall?

[celinehoran]

Hi guys,

My friend is a maths teacher. His Year 9 class asked him some interesting questions today.

Here they are:

Am I 6 foot tall or 6 feet tall? Which is the correct English and why?

How about 5 foot 9? Is it plural or singular and why?

Also, any idea why we use "lbs" as an abbreviation for "pounds"?

Does anyone have any simple answers for his Year 9 class?

[Senorita Daniels]

6 foot or 6 feet- 6 feet tall is right because you need the plural with a number, but I'm not sure why 5 foot 9 is right.
lbs.- I know that the Spanish word for pound is libra, so I think that there's some sort of conection with the Latin word, but I couldn't tell you why we use lbs instead of pds (?).
English is a confusing language.

[Senorita Daniels]

I just thought of a difference for 6 foot and 6 feet. If you're using the size as an adjective, it's six foot (ex. a 6 foot tall tree). If you use 'to be' with the size, it's feet. (ex. He is six feet tall.)

[Rp]

The short form lbs. comes from the Latin for the Roman unit of weight, librae.