Of course, in enlightened, post-medieval countries, they simply use something called a “meterstick”. It’s a yard stick made with less wood and more logic.
In most cases I’d give the measurement without giving the units. I’m one eightysix tall. In some cases that’s ambiguous and for some cases it sounds odd, for instance I’d say someone was two meters tall, not just two tall. (Even though the homophonic confusion doesn’t apply in Norway.)
I was using estimates, to demonstrate that it’s not that hard to grasp the concept. I don’t actually know the exact conversions, and I didn’t bother checking because for the purpose of what I was saying, it’s not relevant.
When someone describes a person’s height as “six feet” or “180 cm” I know approximately how tall they are; any estimate within a few centimetres is close enough for a description. People routinely describe me as “six feet tall” when I am, in fact, 179cm. Which is fine, because it’s close enough for most purposes.
I wish people (well, Americans) would get this. It’s so common to hear people claim (right here on the SDMB) that metric isn’t any easier to work with.
Less wood?
Um… well… mm… yes! It needs less height because centimeters are easier to read, that’s it!
I mean, oops :smack:
Thinner?
No, M would be mega-, the prefix denoting a factor of 10[sup]6[/sup]. On its own it doesn’t make any sense; on the other hand if someone claimed to be 182 Mm tall then with their feet on the ground their head would reach halfway to the moon.
Well, usually we shorten this to ‘I’m one eighty’. I rarely hear people say ‘meter’.
one point eight one; or one eight one.
no problem visualising because most people would be within 30cm of your own height. even for children, a handy guide would be rulers, which come in 15cm, 30cm or even 1m long.
I agree. It’s the same in Germany. For instance, I’m “one ninety five” (about 6’5"). You hardly ever hear “one meter ninety five”, and never “one hundred ninety five centimeters”.
It’s the basically the same here in Israel. As in:
“So we see this big guy, meter ninety, meter ninety five, and he’s with this *tiny *chick, like minuscule, barely a meter and a half.”
Firstly, I don’t know how you’d measure a person to 0.1mm, and secondly, 182.78cm is just *under *six feet. 
I’m 5’10", or 178cm. We use feet and inches for measuring people here in the UK, although if I had to quote it in metric I’d just say “one seventy eight”.
Same in Germany - when asked I say “Ich bin einssechsundachtzig” (I am one eighty-six, height being implied - I have never been asked for other dimensions 
). When there is a form to fill in the unit (cm or m) is specified, and I fill in the number accordingly as “186” or “1,86”. My ID card says: “Height 186 cm”.
I’m involved in medical studies. For height we collect either inches or centimeters to one decimal place (depending on the country). For weight it’s pounds or kilograms also to one decimal place. Admittedly this may not reflect how the man on the street thinks about height and weight, but it is a data point.
That’s how my wife quotes heights.
“One seventy-five” is more common for her to say than “one hundred and seventy-five centimeters”, just like “six two” is more common for me to say than “six feet two inches”.
In Japan, they use cm for people’s height, so I’m 183 cm. No one says 1 meter 83, etc.
If you live in a metric country for a while, you get used to it.
There’s been some very interesting comments. I’m guessing there’s similar regional differences in how weight is expressed? I’m 206 lbs or 93.44 kg. Would anyone say they are 93440 grams? That sound like a lot. how about 93kg and 440 grams?
I think the Brits still use stones? I’m 14.7 st or OR 14 st and 10.00 lb. I like smaller numbers.
well, I tried to fix my error. darn edit time out. I skipped over centigrams and went straight to grams. Centigrams sounds weird for some reason. <shrug> We used grams in chemistry. Never any large values for a class experiment.
corrected
say they are 9344 centigrams? That sound like a lot. how about 93kg and 44 centigrams?
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