Talk:Talent (weight)

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The word comes from the Ancient Greek for carrying, since it was roughly the amount of weight that a soldier could march with on his back. (Cf. Roman weights.)

American Heritage Dictionary gives the talentum < τάλαντον etymology, and LSJ defines τάλαντον as "scale, balance." I don't know where this carrying business came from; obviously the ideas are related, but it seems to have meant simply "a thing that is weighted," and then "a weight" used by a merchant or banker, and then transitively an amount of money equivalent to that weight in gold or whatever. LSJ says: in post-Hom[eric] writers, the τάλαντον was both a commercial weight (differing in different systems), and also the sum of money represented by the corresponding weight of gold or silver. -leigh (φθόγγος) 23:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)