ounce [ME] The unit of weight goes back to Latin uncia, where it meant ‘twelfth part’. In imperial measurement this would have been the twelfth part of a pound, but it is also the basis of *inch as the twelfth part of a foot. Ounce [LME] is also another name for the snow leopard. This is a quite different word, which originally had an extra letter. In medieval French it was lonce, but the ‘l’ was misunderstood as representing le, the French for ‘the’. The word actually goes back to Latin lynx, the root of lynx [ME].