Which many people confuse with the Robada (a unit of land measurement). BTW, the change in unit value is for historical reasons: the measurements were set by local authorities, so changes aren’t by region but by domain (Kingdom or County, those being the two levels at which we had realms that were independent at some point between 711 and 1841). Names equivalent to the English-language pound, inch or foot were used throughout Europe and lands beyond, but had different values in each realm.
I’m not wrong – I said “as in”, to ilustrate the use of more than one letter to indicate smallness. I used Red as the starting point only because the poster I was commenting on did. You have a problem with that, take it up with HIM.
Your using only one color at a time contradicts the Playboy information I was given. But perhaps usage variees with place or time.
Gee, Martian, sorry I somehow missed this! I thought I read the whole thread!
Is there a unit for how much of something one doesn’t see?
This thread is incomplete; yea, verily I say unto thee, that it lacks a link to a much older discussion by truly knowledgable Dopers called
“Where is smithereens?”.
A thread in which we discover important things such as the true definition of “a shitload”.
And also how many “hell’s half-acre” equal one “Way the fuck and beyond”.
What about how much ‘whoop’ is in a can of ‘whoop ass?’ Now THAT would be worth knowing. 
edit: I’ve heard a lot of places are adulterating it with things like ‘bitchy innuendo’ and ‘hey bitch, I think found a handful of your weave.’
Yikes, that thread came to a surprisingly abrupt end. I guess the threshold for closing threads was lower in those days.
I’ve always been partial to Grad deutscher Härte, an old unit of measurement for water hardness. It translates to ‘degrees of German hardness’, and don’t forget to roll your 'r’s while saying its name. (Shaking fist in the air is optional, but encouraged.)
Several of us were a bit put off by the guy talking..who was, in fact, a PhD. We could have solves any of them without any PhDs present. But that’s for another thread.
I know a place that has a rule, only one PhD allowed in any meetings. For some reason this was slightly favored over the zero PhD policy.
The beard-second. The distance an average beard grows in one second. Original sources say 10 nanometers, though Google reports 5 nm.
Here in Panama we refer to the panasecond. This is the shortest measurable unit of time, and corresponds to the time it takes from the light to turn green until someone starts honking you from behind.
It is speculated that the panasecond may actually be negative, since the honking sometimes starts even before the light changes, suggesting that faster than light transfer of information is possible.
My favorite rural Georgia farmer unit. Quite variable in actual units but on the other hand rather precise and useful if implemented properly.
A “look”.
Okay guys, you get on the main highway here in front of my farm. You go 4 “looks” south then you take that highway to the left. Then its another 6 or so “looks” then you take a right and go about 3 “looks”. You’ll then be at farmer Jone’s place and you can talk to him about XYZ.
Gee thanks Farmer Smith. But WTF is a “look”?
A “look” is when you get on a road. Look down it as far as you can seen down the road. Maybe its a distance hill. Maybe a large curve. A bridge. A tunnel. Just a long assed way down the road. Keep that specific point in mind. When you get there you’ve gone one “look”. Now look and see where the point is that defines the next “look” distance. Repeat as needed.
I got specific and complicated directions using “looks” once. Our team kept track of “looks” as we wandered rural Georgia. We go to where we were going and we were all “well, whata you know. It fucking works. And it works pretty good”
Never seen it before or since. Maybe that Georgia farmer was just ahead of his time.
True story. Honest to God.
I see “mho” used in crossword puzzles a lot. Another one I often see in crossword puzzles is the “erg”, which I remember my high school chemistry teacher teaching us is the equivalent of a “fly stamp”, i.e. the amount of energy expended by a fly stamping it’s foot.
As far as funny-sounding units go, I’ve always liked the microhenry, one millionth of a henry. It might be appropriate to use in reference to Henry Joseph Nasiff Jr.
When I first learned that light travels about a foot (~11.78 inches) in a nanosecond (I spend my days staring at nanoseconds on oscilloscopes) I’ve used light-nanoseconds interchangeably with feet and light-feet interchangeably with nanoseconds. And of course, wiki has an entry.
According to Jed Clampett:
I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned the pennyweight (which I think is quite cute) or the gill (not so cute, but rare enough in use to be worth noting).
Another one that actually exists on Google: the Potrzebie System of Weights and Measurements. The base of the system is the potrzebie, which is defined as “the thickness of MAD #26”. One thousand kilopotrzebies equals one furshlugginer potrzebie. A cubic dekapotrzebie in volume is one ngogn, and one ngogn of halavah has a mass of one blintz. “Halavah”, incidentally, is a particular kind of pie, having a specific gravity of 3.1416 and a specific heat of .31416.
Edit: thought of another, real one. The “sleep”. With more time on edit I could find a reference, but I believe it first came about as a sort of combined unit of time/distance. As in, “it’s three sleeps to Milwaukee”, meaning that it would take three days of travel to reach Milwaukee.
The bogon: a measure bogosity, or how bogus something is.
One thing I jusyt learned about the Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures is that it was written by Donald Knuth – the same Don Knuth who went on to write the classic multivolume Art of Computer Programming. In fact, his name is right there on your link, although it doesn’t make it clear why. He wasn’t even twenty yet. He apparently has a long history of humorous pieces:
Heh. Wolfram has potrzebies etc.