Maund
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A wicker basket.
- 2 A unit of weight in south and west Asia, whose value varies widely by location.
"Now the rail has come, and the fire-carriage says buz-buz-buz, and a hundred lakhs of maunds slide across that big bridge."
- 3 begging archaic, uncountable
- 4 a unit of weight used in Asia; has different values in different countries wordnet
- 5 A unit of capacity with various specific local values.
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- 6 A handbasket with two lids. regional
- 1 to beg archaic
"He maunds Abram, he begs as a madde man."
- 2 To mutter; to mumble or speak incoherently; to maunder. obsolete
- 1 A surname.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Now the rail has come, and the fire-carriage says buz-buz-buz, and a hundred lakhs of maunds slide across that big bridge."
Etymology
From Middle English maunde, maundie, borrowed from Old French mande, borrowed from Middle Dutch mande, from Old Dutch *manda, from Proto-West Germanic *mandu.
From Hindi मन (man) / Urdu من (man), and their source, Persian من, from Middle Persian, from Akkadian 𒈠𒉡𒌑 (manû). The -d is probably from assimilation with Etymology 1 above, or from comparison with pound.
Unclear, but possibly from French mendier or quémander (“to beg”). Compare Romani mang (“to beg”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.