Pood
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The pood (Template:Lang-rus, plural: Template:Transliteration or Template:Transliteration) is an obsolete Russian unit of mass equal to 40 funt (Template:Lang, Russian pound).Template:Sfn Since 1899, it has been set to approximately 16.38 kilograms (36.11 pounds).Template:Sfn<ref name="dwip">Template:Cite journal</ref> The pood was first mentioned in the 12th century.Template:Sfn
Use in the past and present
The pood is first mentioned in documents dating to the 12th century.Template:Sfn It is mentioned in the charter of Vsevolod Mstislavich, the prince of Novgorod, dating to 1134–1135. It is also mentioned in the chronicle of Novgorod under the year 1170.<ref>Template:Cite Efron</ref>
In 1899, the metric system was introduced into Russia and made obligatory in 1918.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Together with other units of weight of the obsolete Russian weight measurement system, the Soviet Union officially abolished the pood in 1924. The term remained in widespread use until at least the 1940s.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Its usage is preserved in modern Russian in certain specific cases, e.g., in reference to sports weights, such as traditional Russian kettlebells, cast in multiples and fractions of 16 kg (which is pood rounded to metric units). For example, a 24 kg kettlebell is commonly referred to as "one-and-half pood kettlebell" (Template:Transliteration). It is also sometimes used when reporting the amounts of bulk agricultural production, such as grains or potatoes.
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Idioms
An old Russian proverb reads, "You know a man when you have eaten a pood of salt with him" (Template:Langx).
In modern colloquial Russian, the expression Template:Transliteration (Template:Lang) – 'a hundred poods,' an intentional play on the foreign "hundred percent" – imparts the ponderative sense of overwhelming weight to the declarative sentence it is added to. The generic meaning of "very serious" or "absolutely sure"<ref>English-Russian-English dictionary of slang, jargon and Russian names. 2012</ref> has almost supplanted its original meaning of "very heavy weight." The adjective Template:Transliteration and the adverb Template:Transliteration are also used to convey the same sense of certainty.
The word is also used in Polish idiomatically or as a proverb (with the original/strict meaning commonly forgotten): Template:Lang (Polish for 'unsupportable boredoms', literally 'boredoms [that could be measured] in poods').