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Digit

 
Wikipedia: Digit (length)
Hand-derived units of measurement:
1: Shaftment
2: Hand or handbreadth, commonly used to represent the width of the palm, sometimes including the thumb when closed against the palm
3: Palm, sometimes also represented by four fingers held together, which is slightly less than the true width of the palm at the knuckle
4: Span
5: Finger or fingerbreadth
6: Digit slightly smaller than a finger)


A digit (lat. finger), when used as a unit of length, is usually a sixteenth of a foot, 0.43"; or 1.905 cm (for the international inch). The width of an adult human male finger tip is indeed about 2 centimetres. In English this unit has mostly fallen out of use, as do others based on the human arm: finger (7/6 digit), palm (4 digits), hand (16/3 digits), shaftment (8 digits), span (12 digits), cubit (24 digits) and ell (60 digits).

It is in general equal to the foot-nail, although the term nail can also be used as 1/16th of yard and other units.


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Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Digit (length)" Read more