# Yards as measure **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [November 14, 2011, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914 "2011-11-14T17:34:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MacLir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@MacLir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacLir)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/1 "2011-11-14T17:34:40Z")
One factor not mentioned in the column is that, as any reader of the Robin Hood stories will recall, the arrows used with a longbow were often referred to as being a yard long. Tie that in with the Old English derivation from wand or stick and a pattern appears to emerge. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/2 "2011-11-14T17:42:26Z")
> [@MacLir](#): > > One factor not mentioned in the column is that, as any reader of the Robin Hood stories will recall, the arrows used with a longbow were often referred to as being a yard long. > > Tie that in with the Old English derivation from wand or stick and a pattern appears to emerge. :rolleyes: Cite for Robin Hood stories that mention yard-long arrows, please? Edited to add: [link to column in question.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/637/whats-the-origin-of-miles-and-yards) ---
**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/3 "2011-11-14T18:23:30Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Cite for Robin Hood stories that mention yard-long arrows, please? [Michael Drayton, “Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood,”](http://books.google.com/books?id=IswiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA90#v=onepage&q&f=false) published in the early 1600s: An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood Still ready at his call that bowmen were right good. All clad in Lincoln green, with caps of red and blue, His fellow’s winded horn not one of them but knew. When setting to their lips their little bugles shrill The warbling echoes waked from every dale and hill; Their baldricks set witrh studs, athwart their shouldders cast, To which under their arms their sheafs were bucked fast, A short swor at their blet, a buckler scarce a span, Who struck below the knee, not counted then a man; All made of Spanish yew, their bows were wondrous strong, They not an arrow drew, but was a cloth yard long; Also see [Merriam-Webster’s difinftion of “cloth yard.”](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cloth%20yard) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/4 "2011-11-14T18:26:13Z")
Great pull! Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/5 "2011-11-14T18:45:55Z")
And “clothyard shaft” is a common kenning for “arrow”. ---
**Author:** ![bahimes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@bahimes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bahimes)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/6 "2011-11-16T13:00:02Z")
From Cecil’s column, linked to above: “It originated in the Roman mille passuum, a thousand paces, or more precisely, a thousand strides. Each pace consisted of five Roman feet, giving us a mile of 5,000 feet. Since the Roman foot (the pes) was smaller than today’s foot, the Roman mile was about nine-tenths the length of our mile.” The military pace in use today is 30" (2 1/2 feet) so remnants of the Roman passum are still alive. After reading the column, I was reminded of previous queries I have made over the years about general English measurements, specifically the inch. I did a seach of the forum for English measurement, even SAE measurement and came up with a lot of articles that didn’t really seem relevant to the search. Has (have) there been an article or articles on this subject other than the “Mile/Yard” column referenced above? ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/7 "2011-11-16T16:33:57Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Great pull! Thank you. very punny. ---
**Author:** ![svd678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@svd678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/svd678)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/8 "2011-11-17T04:50:35Z")
No one seems to have noticed this discrepancy: the Romans counted a pace as from where the left foot leaves the ground to where it touches it again. We would call this 2 paces. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/9 "2011-11-17T17:55:24Z")
And one 5’ Roman “pace” equals two 2½’ modern “paces”, so it all works out. ---
**Author:** ![Kiwi-Ian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9fc348/32.png) [@Kiwi-Ian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiwi-Ian)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/10 "2011-11-25T00:33:53Z")
The whole story here just begs the comment, why does anyone still use these measures? The Americans and the British can’t even agree over a pint! Or shoe sizes (I’m a UK size 12 and a US size 13 but here in New Zealand we get a lot of Asian shoes and can’t tell if they’re UK or US. Much simpler. Just change to the metric system. There are only 6 basic measures and all others are derived from them. And among these 6 is the kilogram which can actually be derived from the metre on a human scale. Because the units are derived from others, equations and formulae need no conversions. For instance, length, area and volume should all be related but they aren’t. A foot/yard/mile measures length, an acre measures area and a gallon measures volume. In the metric system, the metre measures length, the square metre measures area and the cubic metre measures volume. A litre is 1/1000 of a cubic metre. A litre of pure water at 4°C (or about 277K) weighs exactly 1kg. So a cubic metre weighs 1 tonne. It goes on. Even better that practically the whole world has seen the advantages. Here in the Antipodes, we have adopted the metric system and it was relatively painless proving that it can be done. Roll on when the US decides to also. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/11 "2011-11-25T10:44:09Z")
UK and US are going metric inch by inch. ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/12 "2011-11-26T16:39:55Z")
> [@Kiwi-Ian](#): > > The whole story here just begs the comment, I don’t even know what this means. There’s an idiom called “begging the _question_”, but given the meaning of “begging” in that phrase, it’s impossible to “beg” a comment. Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2011, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/13 "2011-11-26T23:31:00Z")
> [@Kiwi-Ian](#): > > Much simpler. Just change to the metric system. You mean have the U.S. do the **logical** thing and go with the rest of the world on this particular issue? Not if Fox News has any say about it! The U.S. has been _converting_ over to the metric system since I was a wee lad, and we had a pet dinosaur. Several times in my life, there has been a study or law passed to get the U.S. converted over to the metric system, but alas, it never got executed. We even went as far as putting in KMH on our car speedometers. In a country where a good 25% of the population still believes that our President wasn’t born in this country, you think converting over to the metric system is _simple_? Every time there’s a movement to start moving to the metric system, a big backlash starts. You won’t be able to buy a dozen eggs! They’ll make the week ten days long! It’s a communist plot to make us… …uh… Well, the communists are behind it! The big irony is that Canada uses the metric system. Why does Canada use the metric system? Because the U.S. government passed the Metric Conversion act of 1975, and Canada actually thought we’d switch over! Poor fools. They quietly went metric assuming that any day, the U.S. would do so too. Things sputtered along in the U.S. for five years, then Ronald “It’s Morning in America” Reagan got elected. He shut down the U.S. metric Board, and all the KPM signs along the highway were removed. That’s the last time we attempted to go metric. Truthfully, I don’t know how _helpful_ metric measurements are. One of the nice things about the English system is that measurements are easy to approximate. A human foot is more or less a foot. A yard can be measured by holding out a cloth between your outstretched arm and your mid section. Plus, most metric measurements are just not in good units. The Kilogram is too big and the gram is too small for most measurements we do today. The Pascal (measurement of air pressure) is way too small. This is because the English measurements arose out of need. (I need to measure out cloth. I need to mark off the size of my room) while metric measurements are artificial proclamation by bureaucrats. Yes, metric measurements are easy to convert. How many inches are in a mile or cubic inches in a gallon? I don’t know. However, I can tell you the numbers of centimeters in a kilometer or cubic centimeters in a liter. But, do I really care? There is only one thing that the metric system has going for it: Everyone else uses it. If the U.S. converted over to the metric system, our products would be more exportable and you’d have less confusion when working with international teams. For example, the Mars Climate Orbiter might have not crashed because there were confusions in the plan between metric and English units. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/14 "2011-11-27T17:43:23Z")
America has been going metric since 1866. Since 1893, in fact, the US system has been based on the metric system. (From 1893 to 1959, the legal definition of the inch was 1/39.37 meter; in 1959, as part of a harmonization between the US and Imperial systems, it was changed to exactly 2.54 cm.) Unfortunately, as long as the voting base of the two major parties believes that the metric system was invented by French communists (don’t say it’s too silly to be believed; I heard it with my own ears), mere scientists and technicians haven’t a chance in the land of the willful and the home of the ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/15 "2011-11-28T19:20:28Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > Truthfully, I don’t know how _helpful_ metric measurements are. One of the nice things about the English system is that measurements are easy to approximate. A human foot is more or less a foot. A yard can be measured by holding out a cloth between your outstretched arm and your mid section. Which human’s foot? Shaquille O’Neal? Natalie Portman (5’3")? Neither of their feet is reliably close to 1 foot. And the distance from their outstretched arm to their midsections is fairly different, too, I would imagine. > [@](#): > > Plus, most metric measurements are just not in good units. The Kilogram is too big and the gram is too small for most measurements we do today. The Pascal (measurement of air pressure) is way too small. This is because the English measurements arose out of need. (I need to measure out cloth. I need to mark off the size of my room) while metric measurements are artificial proclamation by bureaucrats. Admittedly some of the units are of less than useful size in their base numbering. Think Farads, where everyday uses are in the microFarad range. But the thing about the metric system is that it is easy to shift the scale by a factor of 10 or 100 to get to a useful range. Don’t like meters? Measure in centimeters. Don’t like Pascals? Measure in kiloPascals. The bigger issue is that lack of use prevents establishing a comfort of working with the system by giving the individual a sense of comfort with regularly used sizes. But I bet you can give as good an estimate of 2 liters as you can a gallon. Similarly, if a yard can be approximated by the distance of your outstretched arm to your midsection, how is that appreciably different than a meter, for the level of precision you are using? And I say this as an American. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2011, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/16 "2011-11-29T10:05:25Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > You won’t be able to buy a dozen eggs! You won’t? That was news to me. > [@qazwart](#): > > Plus, most metric measurements are just not in good units. The Kilogram is too big and the gram is too small for most measurements we do today. That is because you are not familiar with the measurements actually used. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2011, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/17 "2011-12-01T20:42:15Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > You won’t? That was news to me. > > That is because you are not familiar with the measurements actually used. And that’s the root of the problem. In many current-generation Americans, metric measurements, due to practical unfamiliarity, don’t evoke a mental sense like English units do. Much measurement is actually estimation (i.e., “eyeball”), and you can’t do that with a unit you don’t have an “eyeball feel” for. The closest many people come is implicit conversion from metric to English, like “that looks like about 15 yards… I mean meters.. I mean 14 1/2 meters\*… or something.” \*which, if you notice, is completely wrong. Less than 14 meters, in truth, but if you’re just WAGging, that may be as close as you get. The only obvious metric success is the 2-liter soft drink bottle. Because of this we can visualize what two liters look like. But since “two liters” isn’t an actual metric unit, it’s ultimately not very useful in establishing the liter as a routinely visualized estimateable volume. It’s going to be as inconvenient as hell for whichever generation gets stuck in the transition, since their long-developed measurement estimation skills will be rendered useless in one swoop. And that’s why every current generation has successfully resisted metrification. (Which, btw, was the final point Irishman was making at the end of his [excellent post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14507808&postcount=15), but you didn’t really acknowledge.) ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2011, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/18 "2011-12-01T22:45:07Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > You won’t? That was news to me. There you are taking my quote out of context. I’m showing the arguments that people have used in the past against metric measurements in the U.S. And yes, they’re silly arguments. > [@](#): > > That is because you are not familiar with the measurements actually used. I know the measurements quite well. I’ve used them, and I’ve seen them used. In a few places, you see prices in 1/2 kilograms and people order stuff that way. They’ll say “Give me 3 1/2 half-kilos of that”. Surprisingly, half-kilos are just a bit more than a pound. Certain measurements like the Pascal are so irrelevant that non-metric metric measurements are made up for it. My tires show both pounds per square inch and kilograms per square centimeter, not pascals. The “English” measurements were made for a particular situation. You’re selling a horse, how tall is it? Well, I have my hand right here, I’ll see how many _hands_ tall it is. How deep is it right here in the ocean. Wait a second. I’ll tie some knots in this rope and see. To make sure the knots are evenly space, I’ll space them from finger tip to finger tip. Thus we use fathoms and knots for ocean measurements. And, the English system evolved. Useful measures were kept, non-useful ones were dropped. Unfortunately, there were a few issues with the English system: [ul] [li] **Not universal** : Only the British and its colonies used it. That made it hard to trade with other countries. As trade with other nations became important, agreeing how you’re measuring the amount you’re selling is sort of important. Heck, there’s not even an agreement between the United States and England about a lot of measurements.[/li][li] **Not accurate** : In the old days when you sold someone a few yards of cloth, it didn’t matter if you were a few inches short here or there. When you measure a grommet for a widget, you need accuracy. The need for accuracy made things a mess. Now, you had to know exactly how long an inch was and how long a yard was. This brings you to…[/li][li] **One measurement had nothing to do with another** : What do clothes and horses have in common? Exactly, so why should I care how many hands are in a yard? However, once you start defining each measure, you start having to relate one measure to another. So how many cubit inches are there in a quart? I don’t know, are you talking about dry quarts or liquid quarts. A quart is short for quarter, so there were four quarts to a basket and a bottle, but bottles of drinks were smaller than a basket for harvesting.[/li][/ul] And, here the bureaucratically decreed metric system had its advantage! Universality? No problem Napoleon tried to conquer Europe, and thus spread the meter all over Europe. Europe colonized the world, and thus the whole world uses meters. Accuracy? How can a bureaucratic decree be anything but accurate? And, the meter came just as the European world was industrializing and needed that accuracy. Thus, the meter was a meter from day one, but the British and the U.S couldn’t agree on an inch until 1959. As for how one measurement related to another: It didn’t matter, you only had one prime measurement. If you were measuring length, you use a meter. Too short? Use a Kilometer. Too long? Use a centimeter or millimeter. By the way, even the bureaucrats had to use some common sense. The meter is defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance between one pole to another with the meridian running through Paris. Why 1/10,000,000? and not simply 1/1,000,000? Because 1/10,000,000 was about the right length needed for a standard measurement for cloth – an important industry at that time. Why not make a gram a cubic meter of purified water? Why a cubic centimeter? Because a cubic centimeter was a better measurement for the scientific work that the revolutionary French government wanted to foster. (and it’s sort of hard to weigh a cubit meter of water). And, metric isn’t quite as universal as its proponents propose. There are two separate metric scales: There is the cgs (centimeter-gram-second) based measurements and the mks (meter-kilogram-second) measurements. (Notice that neither of these systems used the **base** metric measurements. Why not meters, grams, seconds?) As I stated in my post, the metric system would be a good thing for the U.S. to adopt – not because it is “superior” in any natural sense, but because it is used by everyone else in the entire world, and that in itself makes it better. In the end, commerce trump everything else. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2011, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/19 "2011-12-01T23:04:32Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > The only obvious metric success is the 2-liter soft drink bottle. Because of this we can visualize what two liters look like. But since “two liters” isn’t an actual metric unit, it’s ultimately not very useful in establishing the liter as a routinely visualized estimateable volume. Perhaps. But the other day, I had a really confusing conversation with a coworker over the number of soda bottles we needed for an activity until I realized that he doesn’t think of soda bottles as holding 2 liters of soda. He thinks of them as bottles of soda that we call twoliters. I doubt this is a unique mindset. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2011, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914/20 "2011-12-02T18:54:20Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > Certain measurements like the Pascal are so irrelevant that non-metric metric measurements are made up for it. My tires show both pounds per square inch and kilograms per square centimeter, not pascals. Those are metric measurements, just not SI. SI is the specific set of metric units. Kilograms per square centimeter look like some ill-informed person trying to mimic the US customary units - hey, that’s gotta be the same thing, right? (Like running into problems in college using kilogramsforce. :smack: ) > [@](#): > > As for how one measurement related to another: It didn’t matter, you only had one prime measurement. If you were measuring length, you use a meter. Too short? Use a Kilometer. Too long? Use a centimeter or millimeter. Actually, as far as unit relations goes, there is some advantage. SI has a set of primary units that are defined and uniform, and then builds secondary units out of those primary units. So something like pressure is related to area, and thus has built in to the units definition m[sup]2[/sup]. That makes relationships cleaner. For instance, trying to work with force and mass in some English units\* requires the definition of a conversion factor g[sub]c[/sub], 32.2 ft-lbm/lbf-sec[sup]2[/sup]. The 32.2 is required to relate pounds to pounds. Whereas in SI, force is Newtons and mass is grams (or kilograms), and the relationship between the two is built into the definition of Newton. There is no g[sub]c[/sub] required. (Sometimes basic physics classes teach those formulas with g[sub]c[/sub], and then tell you it = 1 for the SI system. Grrrr.) > [@](#): > > By the way, even the bureaucrats had to use some common sense. The meter is defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance between one pole to another with the meridian running through Paris. While that was the original definition, the current definition is a distance light travels in a vacuum during a specific portion of a second, based upon the speed of light. It’s all about precision and consistency. But yes, that definition has at its root conforming to the original definition of meter. * * * \*One traditional mass measurement in the “English” system is _slugs_, with pounds reserved for force units. But there are a variety of uses of the terminology, including using pounds-mass and pounds-force. Pounds-mass is functional, but requires understanding the relationship between the two depends upon the standard gravity built in to the equivalency. Something has to cancel out the 32.2 ft/sec[sup]2[/sup] acceleration of gravity so that 1 (force unit) = 1 (mass unit) \* g. Thus g[sub]c[/sub]. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yards-as-measure/602914.md?page=2)