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Out of context: Reply #4453
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cubit was the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. For an average adult male (at least, average as of a couple of millennia ago), a cubit works out to about 18 inches (45.7cm)
foot: It probably goes without saying that the unit foot was based on the length of a man’s foot.
span: Stretch out your hand so that the tip of your thumb is as far away as possible from the tip of your pinky. That distance is called a “span,” which for most people is almost exactly half a cubit.
handbreadth: The width of your four fingers where they meet the palm—usually about 4 inches—is a handbreadth or sometimes just a “hand.” The height of horses is usually expressed in hands.
digit: The width of a finger, which tends to be about 2cm (about 13/16 of an inch).
thumb: The width of a thumb, which was later used as the basis for the inch.fathom: If you stretch out your arms to either side of your body as far as they’ll go, the distance between the tips of your middle fingers will be very close to your height, or about six feet—your own feet, that is—a length also known as a fathom.
handful: Although we normally use the word handful in the informal sense of “just a little bit,” your hand can serve as a fairly repeatable measure of volume for dry goods such as grains, beans, and seeds.