  With rare exceptions, in high school and college/university physics courses
literature and in journals of physics, the weight is defined as a gravitational
force or an exclusive consequence of it. These definitions lack logic from the
perspective of present knowledge and can be misleading. The operational
definition of weight of a body as the force the body exerts on its support or
suspender can eliminate the ambiguities associated to "true weight", "apparent
weight", "state of weightlessness", "zero weight", "zero gravity",
"microgravity", "vertical", "up" and "down". Nevertheless, the concept of
weight of a body is not fundamental in Physics and its exclusion from the
physics vocabulary will eliminate some of former concepts or their
ambiguousness with evident benefit for physics teaching and learning. This
paper discusses weight of a body concepts and presents several examples that
show the advantages of avoiding its use or adopting the above-mentioned
operational definition. It is believed that this will eliminates the frequent
identification with the body's mass and will boost student's understanding
associated subjects.
