That’s an interesting idea. I always assumed that “selling something by the pound” referred to the pound as a unit of weight and not currency. It never even occurred to me that people would understand it as referring to the pound sterling.

That said, The Telegraph’s title does make for a bit of catchiness, so I can forgive them the twist on words. Chalk it up to artistic license.

The new manner of producing pre-paid postage on envelopes demonstrates your point clearly. The envelopes are bought in a packet of x for x price, or individually. The stamp area no longer marks the value on the image of the stamp, which can change, but the maximum weight that can fit into that pre-paid envelope without adding further postage value.

Who says you can’t by things by the Euro? I always buy fuel from the Service Station by asking for 50 Euro worth and never by volume.

You are quite right in that the pound in the saying refers to weight rather than currency but that just makes the word-play better.

Sigh ….. how much more embarrassing can these headlines get!

[Daphne – Re your assertion that you buy petrol by the euro: you don’t. You buy it by the gallon/litre, and that’s exactly how it’s priced. It’s just that the pump system works out the equation to save you the hassle of working out for yourself how many litres you’re getting for your 50 euros. Not to be anally retentive about it or anything, but when things are sold by volume, by weight, or by the metre, they are sold by volume, by weight, or by the metre FOR X euros. Sellers don’t measure out their goods by the euro: even your petrol pump measures out the volume it’s giving you by the litre. You’re confusing the idea of ‘buying something by the euro’ with ‘buying 50 euros worth of petrol’, which is different. I like British English because it is so precisely nuanced.]

The ‘Tagħna Lkoll’ movement will most probably take this — again literally — as a compliment.

I think it’s a kind of double play on words. It’s the latest in cutting-edge British humour. Private Eye does it all the time.

Try this for size: “Give the man an inch and he’ll take half a million.”

http://corrieredellumbria.corr.it/news/home/132862/Barca-di-15-metri-trasportata-sulla.html

[Daphne – Yes, I know. That’s the point I made. It’s a play on words rooted in a mistaken interpretation of ‘selling something by the pound’. Hence, selling something by the euro doesn’t make sense. You can’t sell something BY the euro because the euro is not a unit of measurement, but a unit of currency used to pay FOR it not BY it. That’s one that got past the sub-editor. Plays on words have to be idiomatically and grammatically correct like everything else that is published. And that is quite apart from the fact that it doesn’t make sense.]