Yards or Meters?

Fortnight - that’s another measurement that hasn’t travelled well. For 3 years I was a classroom instructor in an adult multinational technical school. I used the term fortnight once and got a lot of blank looks. Surprised my colleagues from across the pond didn’t use it, no surprises from those using English as a second/third language.
 
Inca said:
Fortnight - that’s another measurement that hasn’t travelled well. For 3 years I was a classroom instructor in an adult multinational technical school. I used the term fortnight once and got a lot of blank looks. Surprised my colleagues from across the pond didn’t use it, no surprises from those using English as a second/third language.
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If a fella could hit a Polo @ four score & seven, just once a fortnight, freehand, he'd be doin' O.K. ... Many couldn't do it once in a Lustrum.
 
chouchin66 said:
If a fella could hit a Polo @ four score & seven, just once a fortnight, freehand, he'd be doin' O.K. ... Many couldn't do it once in a Lustrum.
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Well done, Chris - I had to look up "Lustrum!"
:oops:

My Canadian cousin visited us years ago for 2 weeks and was totally confused at the family party when everybody else used the term "fortnight" around her.

She was very bright and well educated, Honours Degree in English from a Canadian University, Montreal IIRC???

Just not a term which seems to have survived in the North American continent - which is odd because "you guys" use a few "Fossil" words from the English language taken Westwards by your ancestors when emigrating such as "gotten."
 
Byronic said:
Well done, Chris - I had to look up "Lustrum!"
:oops:

My Canadian cousin visited us years ago for 2 weeks and was totally confused at the family party when everybody else used the term "fortnight" around her.

She was very bright and well educated, Honours Degree in English from a Canadian University, Montreal IIRC???

Just not a term which seems to have survived in the North American continent - which is odd because "you guys" use a few "Fossil" words from the English language taken Westwards by your ancestors when emigrating such as "gotten."
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I only remember " lustrum" because of the looking up of same, after it it was used in part of an admonishment speech to " Rooster Cogburn". 🙂
 
New word to me but as I’m always saying (stop me if you’re bored of hearing it) ‘every day’s a school day’.
 
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I can't be bothered to read the thread but in answer to the question in the title. Meters and yards are two very different things so I am surprised by any confusion:

Yards are a unit of measure and it is also what Amerrycuns call back gardens.
Meters are measuring devices the most common being for electricity, gas and water.
 
Vy Rark Orro said:
I can't be bothered to read the thread but in answer to the question in the title. Meters and yards are two very different things so I am surprised by any confusion:

Yards are a unit of measure and it is also what Amerrycuns call back gardens.
Meters are measuring devices the most common being for electricity, gas and water.
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There's front yards too.

As for conversion...

Screenshot 2025-12-04 114953.png


History sidenote: here in the States in the 1970's the federal government tried to move the US into the 20th Century by converting everything to metric. Everybody hated it, and the effort died. There are still a few remnants of it, though. There used to be a sign on I-70 that said, "Columbus: 100 miles 166 kilometers." And pop/soda is sold in 2-liter bottles instead of half-gallon bottles. That cartoon dates from that effort.
 
leezgunz said:
I've just measured the rug in our lounge with a tape measure and it's
2 metres 3 inches and 5 of those tiny segments,,,,,
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Just seen this one :ROFLMAO:.

It reminds me of when I organised an informal postal BR25 competition and the only way I could some of the club members (and not just the oldies) to understand the 25 was metres was to put in the rules '....targets will be shot at 25 metres, that is 27yd 1ft 2inches....' I didn't bother with the extra quarter inch :rolleyes:.
 
Sorry but I have not read all posts so this may be a repeat.

Metre is the English word: the SI base unit of length (equivalent to approximately 39.37 inches), first introduced as a unit of length in the metric system.
Meter is the American spelling of the same thing. OK, in English a 'meter' usually refers to a measuring device. Personally I use both yards and metres; when gainfully employed it was usually imperial yards at home and the metric metre at work. I knew some people still using furlongs, chains, etc etc.
Cheers, Phil :)
 
Phil Russell said:
Sorry but I have not read all posts so this may be a repeat.

Metre is the English word: the SI base unit of length (equivalent to approximately 39.37 inches), first introduced as a unit of length in the metric system.
Meter is the American spelling of the same thing. OK, in English a 'meter' usually refers to a measuring device. Personally I use both yards and metres; when gainfully employed it was usually imperial yards at home and the metric metre at work. I knew some people still using furlongs, chains, etc etc.
Cheers, Phil :)
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Good thing furlongs are still used...
Metres would confuse the heck outta the horses...
 
Archer50 said:
Just seen this one :ROFLMAO:.

It reminds me of when I organised an informal postal BR25 competition and the only way I could some of the club members (and not just the oldies) to understand the 25 was metres was to put in the rules '....targets will be shot at 25 metres, that is 27yd 1ft 2inches....' I didn't bother with the extra quarter inch :rolleyes:.
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🤣 I'm actually OK with both really,,I'm a time served carpenter and back in the day while doing my apprenticeship, metric was the change,,at college they were teaching metric but on site I was working with old fellas who called for me to cut everything in imperial,,,
 
leezgunz said:
🤣 I'm actually OK with both really,,I'm a time served carpenter and back in the day while doing my apprenticeship, metric was the change,,at college they were teaching metric but on site I was working with old fellas who called for me to cut everything in imperial,,,
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Be a bit strange converting a crosscut Disston from 7.5 or 8TPI too.🙂
 
I do weird stuff when measuring. Two foot six inches on one side of the tape plus a millimetre from the other side. A bodge but easier in poor light than counting in sixteenths or millimetres.
 
TobyGator said:
There's front yards too.

As for conversion...

View attachment 856320

History sidenote: here in the States in the 1970's the federal government tried to move the US into the 20th Century by converting everything to metric. Everybody hated it, and the effort died. There are still a few remnants of it, though. There used to be a sign on I-70 that said, "Columbus: 100 miles 166 kilometers." And pop/soda is sold in 2-liter bottles instead of half-gallon bottles. That cartoon dates from that effort.
Click to expand...
The problem with metric is that every day measurements are not intuitive. My thumb is roughly one inch wide, my foot is roughly a foot, my stride or tip of finger to centre of chest is roughly a yard. I'll keep quiet about centimetre body parts.

I am not happy with Celsius either. Bring back Fahrenheit or stick with Centigrade and use Kelvin and make life easier for the boffins.

Is a US liter the same volume as a litre or do you get short changed like the pints and gallons?
 
The 2 years of mathematics leading up to O-levels were all imperial, imagine the teachers’ shock when they opened the exam paper to discover metric questions; somebody had dropped a major ********. The exam started 15-minutes late after we had a quick lesson in grams, kilograms, metres and centimetres.
 
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