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Shaftment
The shaftment is an obsolete unit of length defined since the 12th century as 6 inches, which nowadays is exactly . A shaftment was traditionally the width of the fist and outstretched thumb. The lengths of poles, staves, etc. can be easily measured by grasping the bottom of the staff with thumb extended and repeating such hand over hand grips along the length of the staff. History It occurs in Anglo-Saxon written records as early as 910 and in English as late as 1474. After the modern foot came into use in the twelfth century, the shaftment was reinterpreted as exactly foot or . Spelling and etymology Other spellings include ''schaftmond'' and ''scaeftemunde'', and ''shathmont''. It is derived from Old English , in turn from Proto-Germanic *''skaftaz'' (shaft) and OE , from the Proto-Germanic *''mund'', in turn from Proto-Indo-European root *''man'' (hand.) Two shaftments make a , literally . This unit has mostly fallen out of use, as have others based on the human arm: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hand Units Of Measurement
A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "hand" and fingerprints extremely similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having "hands" instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having "hands" though opposable thumbs are lacking. Some evolutionary anatomists use the term ''hand'' to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb more generally—for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand. The human hand usually has five digits: four fingers plus one thumb; these are often referred to collectively as five fingers, however, whereby the thumb is included as one of the fingers. It has 27 bones, not including the sesamoid bone, the number of wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inch
Measuring tape with inches The inch (symbol: in or ″) is a unit of length in the British imperial and the United States customary systems of measurement. It is equal to yard or of a foot. Derived from the Roman uncia ("twelfth"), the word ''inch'' is also sometimes used to translate similar units in other measurement systems, usually understood as deriving from the width of the human thumb. Standards for the exact length of an inch have varied in the past, but since the adoption of the international yard during the 1950s and 1960s the inch has been based on the metric system and defined as exactly 25.4 mm. Name The English word "inch" ( ang, ynce) was an early borrowing from Latin ' ("one-twelfth; Roman inch; Roman ounce"). The vowel change from Latin to Old English (which became Modern English ) is known as umlaut. The consonant change from the Latin (spelled ''c'') to English is palatalisation. Both were features of Old English phonology; see and fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foot (unit)
The foot ( feet), standard symbol: ft, is a unit of length in the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement. The prime symbol, , is a customarily used alternative symbol. Since the International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959, one foot is defined as 0.3048 meters exactly. In both customary and imperial units, one foot comprises 12 inches and one yard comprises three feet. Historically the "foot" was a part of many local systems of units, including the Greek, Roman, Chinese, French, and English systems. It varied in length from country to country, from city to city, and sometimes from trade to trade. Its length was usually between 250 mm and 335 mm and was generally, but not always, subdivided into 12 inches or 16 digits. The United States is the only industrialized nation that uses the international foot and the survey foot (a customary unit of length) in preference to the meter in its commercial, engin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branches during the fifth century BC to fifth century AD: West Germanic, East Germanic and North Germanic, which however remained in contact over a considerable time, especially the Ingvaeonic languages (including English), which arose from West Germanic dialects and remained in continued contact with North Germanic. A defining feature of Proto-Germanic is the completion of the process described by Grimm's law, a set of sound changes that occurred between its status as a dialect of Proto-Indo-European and its gradual divergence into a separate language. As it is probable that the development of this sound shift spanned a considerable time (several centuries), Proto-Germanic cannot adequately be reconstructed as a simple node in a tree model but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digit (unit)
The digit or finger is an ancient and obsolete non- SI unit of measurement of length. It was originally based on the breadth of a human finger. It was a fundamental unit of length in the Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Roman systems of measurement. In astronomy a digit is one twelfth of the diameter of the sun or the moon. History Ancient Egypt The digit, also called a finger or fingerbreadth, is a unit of measurement originally based on the breadth of a human finger. In Ancient Egypt it was the basic unit of subdivision of the cubit. On surviving Ancient Egyptian cubit-rods, the royal cubit is divided into seven palms of four digits or fingers each. The royal cubit measured approximately 525 mm, so the length of the ancient Egyptian digit was about 19 mm. Mesopotamia In the classical Akkadian Empire system instituted in about 2250 BC during the reign of Naram-Sin, the finger was one-thirtieth of a cubit length. The cubit was equ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finger (unit)
A finger (sometimes fingerbreadth or finger's breadth) is any of several units of measurement that are approximately the width of an adult human finger, including: The digit, also known as digitus or digitus transversus (Latin), dactyl (Greek) or dactylus, or finger's breadth — of an inch or of a foot. In medicine and related disciplines (anatomy, radiology, etc.) the fingerbreadth (literally the width of a finger) is an informal but widely used unit of measure. In the measurement of distilled spirits, a finger of whiskey refers to the amount of whiskey that would fill a glass to the level of one finger wrapped around the glass at the bottom. Another definition (from Noah Webster): "nearly an inch." Finger is also the name of a longer unit of length used in cloth measurement, specifically, one eighth of a yard or 4 inches. In English these units have mostly fallen out of use, apart from the common use in distilled drinks and drinking games. See also * Digit (unit) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palm (unit)
The palm is an obsolete anthropic unit of length, originally based on the width of the human palm and then variously standardized. The same name is also used for a second, rather larger unit based on the length of the human hand. The width of the palm was a traditional unit in Ancient Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome and in medieval England, where it was also known as the hand,. handbreadth, or handsbreadth.. The only commonly discussed "palm" in modern English is the biblical palm of ancient Israel. The length of the hand—originally the Roman "greater palm"—formed the palm of medieval Italy and France. In Spanish customary units ' or ' was the palm, while ' was the span, the distance between an outstretched thumb and little finger. In Portuguese ' or ' was the span. History Ancient Egypt The Ancient Egyptian palm ( egy, shesep) has been reconstructed as about . The unit is attested as early as the reign of Djer, third pharaoh of the First Dynasty, and appears on many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hand (unit)
The hand is a non- SI unit of measurement of length standardized to . It is used to measure the height of horses in many English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It was originally based on the breadth of a human hand. The adoption of the international inch in 1959 allowed for a standardized imperial form and a metric conversion. It may be abbreviated to "h" or "hh". Although measurements between whole hands are usually expressed in what appears to be decimal format, the subdivision of the hand is not decimal but is in base 4, so subdivisions after the radix point are in quarters of a hand, which are inches. Thus, 62 inches is fifteen and a half hands, or 15.2 hh (normally said as "fifteen-two", or occasionally in full as "fifteen hands two inches"). Terminology "Hands" may be abbreviated to "h", or "hh". The "hh" form is sometimes interpreted as standing for "hands high". When spoken a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Span (length)
A span is the distance measured by a human hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. In ancient times, a span was considered to be half a cubit. Sometimes the distinction is made between the great span or full span (thumb to little finger) and little span or short span (thumb to index finger, or index finger to little finger). History Ancient Greek texts show that the span was used as a fixed measure in ancient Greece since at least archaic period. The word ''spithame'' (Greek: "σπιθαμή"), "span", is attested in the work of Herodotus in the 5th century BC; however, the span was used in Greece long before that, since the word ''trispithamos'' (Greek: "τρισπίθαμος"), "three spans long", occurs as early as the 8th century BC in Hesiod. Hesiod, ''Works and Days'', 426, oPerseus Digital Library/ref> Size of the span English usage ; 1 span := 9 inches := 22.86 cm Chinese usage In China and Chinese cultured countries, a span (一拃) refers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cubit
The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. It was primarily associated with the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Israelites. The term ''cubit'' is found in the Bible regarding Noah's Ark, Ark of the Covenant, Tabernacle, Solomon's Temple Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple (, , ), was the Temple in Jerusalem between the 10th century BC and . According to the Hebrew Bible, it was commissioned by Solomon in the United Kingdom of Israel before being inherited by th .... The ''common cubit'' was divided into 6 palms × 4 Finger (unit), fingers = 24 digit (unit), digits. ''Royal cubits'' added a palm for 7 palms × 4 fingers = 28 digits. These lengths typically ranged from , with an ancient Roman cubit being as long as . Cubits of various lengths were employed in many parts of the world in ancient history, antiquity, during the Middle Ages and as recently as Early modern Europe, early modern time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ell (unit)
An ell (from Proto-Germanic *''alinō'', cognate with Latin ''ulna'') is a northwestern European unit of measurement, originally understood as a cubit (the combined length of the forearm and extended hand). The word literally means "arm", and survives in the form of the modern English word "elbow" (arm-bend). Later usage through the 19th century refers to several longer units, some of which are thought to derive from a "double ell". An ell-wand or ellwand was a rod of length one ell used for official measurement. Edward I of England required that every town have one. In Scotland, the Belt of Orion was called "the King's Ellwand". An iron ellwand is preserved in the entrance to Stånga Church on the Swedish island of Gotland, indicating the role that rural churches had in disseminating uniform measures. Several national forms existed, with different lengths, including the Scottish ell , the Flemish ell l, the French ell une,Brayshaw, Tom S., ed. ''Brayshaw's Mathematic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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