As a child of the early 1970s, I’m in the unfortunate position of being in a country that was switching to the metric system* in my early youth but with elders who still use–and a society itself still sometimes using–imperial measurements. So I’ve grown up with cars whose primary speedometer readings are in km/h, but with people still referring to lumber lengths and widths, and tree and house heights, in feet and inches.
I know what a 2-litre container of milk looks and feels like when I heft it, but still gauge butter sizes by a full pound or fractions of a cup for (presumably American) recipes that still tend to be in imperial.
I know the width and depth of our plot of land in the city, and its room sizes and ceiling heights, in feet and inches, but I only grasp Celcius for temperatures.
I know and refer to my height in feet (six even), and only know it in centimetres because 6 ft. X 30 cm per ft. = a tidy 180 cm. I only know my weight in pounds. When our daughter gets a checkup at the doctor, I’m given her height in centimetres and her weight in kilograms, but I need to use my calculator to figure out what that means.
It’s maddening.
While I’ve recently told myself I’ll start getting more accustomed to metric measurements–mid-life crises take on all forms, my friends–there are going to be some aspects that hang around for a while that I may just have to accept as my personal, if not a societal, metric-imperial dichotomy.
Among them, it occurred to me this weekend that there’s no handy metric version of an imperial foot.
I understand that 12 inches, “a foot”, equals right around 30 centimetres. All good there. What I mean is that much of common vernacular for close distance has, at least in my experience, been measured in feet, and that there’s no equivalent of something about that size in metric terminology.
A decimetre is ten centimetres (about a third of an imperial foot, and by no means a measurement anyone uses outside of learning the metric system in school). A metre is one hundred centimetres, which is about three feet, or a yard. But there’s no designated term for anything in between the (impractical) decimetre and the (lengthy) metre.
In imperial terms, it would be as if there’s no measurement for anything in between four inches–“a hand”, as it turns out–and a yard. How long (pun only half-intended) would that have been the case before someone came up with a term for something practical lying in between those two sizes?
A foot, for all its imperial-ness that full metric countries have long done away with, has proven to me to be a pretty handy measurement for estimated smaller distances. And in my striving to metricize my brain, I’m finding an uncomfortable hole where something that’s about a foot should be filled with. I’d even take a half metre–50 centimetres, or close to a foot and a half–at least for starters.
I recently posted about my search for a gender-neutral term for “guys”, and it looks like I’m back in a similar situation of looking for a new word, here for a handy metric measurement that’s between a decimetre and a metre; something that’s about a foot in length.
This would have a genuine use in books, as well (said the writer). If the world is gradually going metric, so in theory imperial measurements would eventually be so outdated as to be archaic at some point, the term “foot” will fall by the wayside. But how is a writer supposed to ratchet up tension if there’s no term for a distance between 10 centimetres and a metre?
The heavy footsteps approached the closet where the child hid.
Three metres at most.
Now only two.
A tear escaped down her cheek. She wanted to cry out so badly–call out to any neighbour who could help–but knew she had to be completely quiet, trying now to even slow her breathing so it wouldn’t make a sound.
One metre away and slowing as he approached, this intruder who she had seen kill her parents.
Now 80 centimetres.
60.
40. Which she knew was just longer than the rulers she used in school, part of her brain pointed out. Was there a term for that length?
20…
Yep. Nothing like cranking up suspense by using polysyllabic fractions of a metre, as the old saying goes.
As with suggestions for the new “guys”, it’s also got to trip easily off the tongue. “Half a meter” is three words, after all. Given nature’s widespread tendency to go with the path of least resistance, three words instead of one isn’t going to cut it. Hell, I’ve heard people compress established phrases or multi-word business names into just the first letters of those words–ostensibly to save time from saying the whole term–even if it actually takes them longer to say it. Saying “KFC” instead of “Kentucky Fried Chicken” makes sense, syllable-saving-wise. Yet some years back I noticed police procedural shows started having characters say “GSW” for “gun shot wound(s)”. On paper, GSW saves some key strokes. There, it makes sense. When saying it aloud, though, “gun shot wound” is three syllables, while “GSW” is five. It’s weird to hear people use a term that’s intended to shorten a spoken phrase but in fact lengthens it.
*ahem* But I digress…
Part of the trick here is that there are no colloquialisms in metric. Everything has a name that means precisely what the measurement is and how it connects to other names. “Milli” is one thousandths of something. There are one thousand millimetres in one metre and one thousand millilitres in a litre.
“Centi” is hundredths. There are one hundred centimetres in a metre.
“Kilo” is one thousand. There are one thousand metres in a kilometre and one thousand grams in a kilogram, etc.
Point being, while the attributed terms “inch” and “foot” and “mile” have been standardized in imperial vernacular, metric measurements aren’t named that way. That’s one of its most sensical atributes. But that’s also the one big stumbling block in coming up with a term for a measurement that’s arguably handy but falls in between two of those already designated/named measurements of a decimetre and a metre.
How about a “half”? Meaning, half a metre?
“I think my guinea pig is prepping to run a marathon. He just did three halves in under a minute. For those not well-versed in guinea pig speed, that’s pretty fast.”
Or if we don’t mind getting a bit silly with it (and the world could arguably always use more silliness), how about “ham”, an acronym for “half a metre”?
“What’s the length of this dining table?”
“I’d estimate two metres. Maybe five hams.”
See? It’s fun to say, plus “ham” is a scant one syllable, which cuts way down on the unwieldy three syllables in “half a metre” that the busiest among us simply don’t have time to relay.
It also offers enough off-beat vibe that it could be interpreted as perhaps being named after the general length of a ham, which keeps that whimsical, imperial flavouring to it.
Wins all around.
I’m open to suggestions, of course. But suffice to say, finding a handy metric for something in the 90%(!) of undeclared space between a decimetre and a metre would make my own transition to metric usage, and perhaps those of others in my position, at least a bit easier to manage.
Make it so.
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*Canada initiated the change in 1970. Most things are now in metric–road speeds are marked in km/h like the predominant numbers on our speedometers, weights of labeled groceries have g as the main (if not only) measurement and liquids are only (or at least) in L, etc.
But in other ways, the imperial standards are still around. Bulk weights of groceries are often still in $/lb, and cubic yards of gravel are still sold, while standard lumber sizes (at least nominally, long-since not literally) remain 2X4s, or 6X6s, and I’ve only ever seen their lengths measured, labeled and sold in feet and inches.
All of which raises the question: With the transition into a metric system now in its 50th year, will Canada ever be fully metric? Or, being next door to the world’s biggest imperial system holdout, are we going to have some aspects of that system mixed into ours until/unless they switch as well?