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Span

 
Wikipedia: Span (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 span is the distance measured by a human hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. In ancient times, a span was considered to be half a cubit. See also: English unit

1 span 
= 9 inches
= 0.2286 m

In Slavic languages, the analogue of the span is the piad (in Polish, piędź; in Russian, пядь). It is the width from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the forefinger. See also: Obsolete Russian weights and measures

1 piad 
= 4 vershok
= 7 inches
= 0.1778 m

In Swahili, the equivalent of the span is the futuri.

In Hindi-Urdu and other languages of Northern India and Pakistan, the span is commonly used as an informal measure and called bālisht (Urdu: بالشت, Hindi: बालिश्त).[1]

Notes

  1. ^ Norman Lockyer, "Nature," Nature Publishing Group, Macmillan Journals Ltd., 1922.

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