I’ve recently seen the word “lineal” pop into use at Home Depot, as in, “That’s 16 lineal feet of crown molding.”
I thought the correct term is “linear,” as in “linear geometry,” not “lineal geometry.”
Wazzup?
According to Dictionary dot com, lineal and linear are synonomous.
Well…the diff is usage - How people most often use lineal and linear…
Linear, as noted, is often used to describe how to measure something, like counter tops. Often, so you don’t think you need to measure sqaure feet, someone will tell you to measure the lineal feet. “How much for 24 lineal feet of standard counter tops?”
Linear often is used to describe a line, like on a graph, and how it relates to something. “Oh they have a linear relationship.” You know, as one increases, so does the other.
So, people do use them differently, but they can still be synonomous.
In civil engineering, we use the term “linear feet,” abreviated as “LF.”
Example: 4,000 linear feet of PVC sewer.
The term “linear” is added to formally distinguish “linear feet” from “square feet” and “cubic feet,” and to ensure there is no room for misunderstanding, such as in contract documents.
Many contractors and some field engineers tend to be sloppy about units, such as referring to volumes of soil in terms of “yards” when they mean “cubic yards.” This is bad enough in the field, but you want to keep possible confusion out of contract documents.
I’ve never heard “lineal” used.
Buying lumber, mouldings, trim, etc you hear "lineal feet’. Whether at a hack store like Home Depot, or from a mill or carpenter cranking out custom profiles, they speak "lineal feet’.
I have some experience in construction and design. I have always heard linear in design and math apps. When working construction or in the lumber yard it tends to be lineal. For what that’s worth…
examples: http://www.palmerlumber.com/convertbf.htm
and the US Army Corp of Engineers speaks "lineal’ :