Copy of `HowMany - Unit Dictionar`

The wordlist doesn't exist anymore, or, the website doesn't exist anymore. On this page you can find a copy of the original information. The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.

HowMany - Unit Dictionar Category: Mathematics and statistics > Dictionary of unit measurements Date & country: 26/09/2008, USA Words: 1293

bunder
a traditional Dutch unit of land area. Since the adoption of the metric system in the Netherlands in 1809 the bunder has been considered equal to the hectare (2.471 acres). Historically, the unit varied with locality, generally in the range 0.85-1.3 hectare. The unit was also used in Belgium, being called the bonnier in French-speaking provinces.

bundle (bdl)
a unit of quantity for paper, equal to 2 reams or 40 quires. This would be 960 sheets using the old definition of 24 sheets per quire, or 1000 sheets using the newer quire of 25 sheets.

bundle (bdl)
a traditional unit of length for yarn, equal to 20 hanks. For cotton yarn, a bundle contains 16 800 yards (about 15.362 kilometers). For wool, a bundle contains 11 200 yards (10.241 kilometers).

bundle (bdl)
in the construction trades, a bundle is a package of shingles. Shingles are usually packed so that exactly 3, 4, or 5 bundles are needed to cover a square (100 square feet or 9.29 square meters). Asphalt shingles are often sold in bundles of 27, with 3 bundles per square, but the heavier cedar shingles generally require 5 bundles per square.

butcher
a unit of volume for beer in South Australia. A butcher of beer is a glass holding 200 milliliters (about 7 imperial fluid ounces). This is called a glass or a seven in other parts of Australia.

button measure
a unit of distance equal to 1/40 inch (0.635 millimeter), used, as you might guess, for measuring the thickness of buttons. This unit is also called the line, a bad idea since the line is generally equal to 1/12 inch.

Bya or bya
a common abbreviation (in English speaking countries) for 'billion years ago.'

CA, CCA
abbreviations for 'cranking amps' and 'cold cranking amps,' respectively. These units are often seen on motor vehicle batteries in the U.S. The amps involved are ordinary amperes of electric current. 'Cranking amps' measure the current supplied by the battery when starting the vehicle at a temperature of 32 °F (0 °C), while 'cold cranking...

cade
an old name for a cask, sometimes used as a unit of measure for fish. A cade of herring, for example, was 720 fish.

calendar year (cal yr)
a civil unit of time, equal to 365 days or (in leap years) 366 days. See year . In archaeology, climatology, and other sciences studying the earth over the last 40 000 years or so, a careful distinction must be made between calendar years (cal yr) and radiocarbon years (¹⁴C yr).

caliper
the thickness of a sheet of paper or card stock. Traditionally measured in points (thousandths of an inch), caliper is now measured in microns (micrometers). The word 'caliper' is sometimes used in place of the proper unit, as in '.004 caliper' (.004 inch or 4 points) or '120 caliper' (120 microns).

Callipic cycle
a unit of time equal to 76 years or 4 Metonic cycles, formerly used in astronomy in predicting the phases of the Moon. After the passage of one Callipic cycle, the phases of the Moon repeat essentially on the same calendar dates as in the preceding cycle. The cycle is named for the Greek astronomer Callipus, who discovered it in 330 BCE.

caña, canna, canne
traditional units of distance in Spain, Italy, and southern France, respectively. The caña varied in size, but it was most often defined as 8 palmos, which makes it the Mediterranean version of the fathom, equal to roughly 2 meters (6.5 feet). In Italy a measuring stick is still called a canna metrica. The unit is sometimes translated 'rod' ...

candy
a traditional weight unit of South Asia. The candy was quite variable, generally within the range 500 to 800 pounds (225 to 365 kilograms). In the international cotton trade, the candy was generally equal to exactly 7 (British) hundredweight, which is 784 pounds or 355.62 kilograms.

canvas
in rowing, a 'canvas' is the distance between the bowman and the bow, or between the coxswain and the stern. These areas were once covered by canvas. Winning by a canvas in rowing is analogous to winning by a head in a horse race.

Cape rood
a traditional unit of distance in South Africa, equal to 12 Cape feet or 12.396 English feet (3.7783 meters). See also rood.

carb
an informal unit equal to 1 gram of carbohydrate, commonly used in describing low-carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins diet. This newer usage of the term 'carb' conflicts with the traditional use by diabetics (previous entry).

carcel
a former French unit for measuring the intensity of light. The unit was defined as the intensity of a standard Carcel lamp, which burnt colza oil in a precisely defined way. One carcel equals about 9.74 candelas (see above).

carga
a traditional unit in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. The word means 'load'. It was often used as a unit of mass or weight equal to 3 quintals or as a unit of volume equal to the volume holding 3 quintals of the commodity being shipped.

Carnegie unit
a unit of academic credit used in college admissions decisions in the U.S. The unit was introduced by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1914 to provide colleges with a standard measure of students' course work in high schools. A Carnegie unit represents the equivalent of one academic year of study in a subject in a class me...

carreau
a traditional unit of land area in Haiti equal to approximately 1.29 hectares (3.18 acres). The unit originated as the area of a square 100 pas (Haitian paces) on a side, with the pas being equal to 3.5 pieds (French feet). Foreigners are not allowed to own more than 1 carreau of urban land or 5 carreaux of rural land in Haiti.

carton
a small container. The size of a carton is usually not standardized, but certain sizes are customary. In the U.S. citrus fruit industry, a standard carton is equal to 1/2 box or 0.8 bushel (28.191 liters).

carucate
another name for the hide, an old English unit of land area. The name comes from a Latin word meaning 'plowland.'

case
a conventional unit of sales for many items, varying with the item and over time. A case of wine, for example, is traditionally twelve 750-milliliter bottles. The word comes from the Latin capsa, a chest.

castellation
a unit of angle measure equal to 1/6 turn or 60°, used in mechanical engineering. A castellated nut is a locknut having a raised rim with a number of equally spaced slots, usually 6. A cotter pin fits into one of the slots and into a hole bored in the bolt, holding the nut in place with a precise degree of torque, or 'tightness'. To turn the n...

category
the ranking of a hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, used by the U.S. National Weather Service. A somewhat different scale of categories is used for tropical cyclones by the Australian Bureau of Meterology.

cawny or cawney
a traditional unit of land area in southern India, equal to about 4/3 acre (0.54 hectare). The name is an English tranliteration of a Tamil word for the unit.

cb-
abbreviation for 'cubic,' seen in combinations such as cbm (cubic meter) or cbft (cubic foot). The proper symbol for cubic meters is m³, not cbm.

cc or cc
a symbol for the centesimal second (see below).

ccm
an incorrect symbol for the cubic centimeter (cm³).

CCs
a unit of telecommunications traffic equal to 100 call-seconds. One CCs could represent a single call 100 seconds long, or 10 calls each 10 seconds long, etc. The symbol stands for 'centum call second.'

CE
French abbreviation for colonne d'eau, water column, seen in pressure measurements. See centimeter of water (below) or millimeter of water.

Celsius
see degree Celsius. The word 'degree' is often omitted in informal statements of temperature, as in 'we expect a high of about 23 Celsius today.'

cent
an old English unit of quantity, usually equal to 100 but sometimes 120 (the great or long hundred) or some other figure of similar size. The Latin number 100, centum, is also used in English works for this quantity.

cent
an informal name for 1/100 of almost any unit, for example, a centiliter (0.01 liter). Phrases such as '15 cents of an inch' were formerly common in English.

cent
a unit used in music when it is necessary to specify the ratio in frequency between two tones with great precision. There are 100 cents in a semitone, or 1200 in an octave. If two notes differ by 1 cent, the ratio between their frequencies is 2^1/1200 or approximately 1.000 5778.

cent
a unit used in nuclear engineering to describe the 'reactivity' of a nuclear reactor, equal to 0.01 dollar. For a discussion of reactivity, see inhour.

centiare (ca)
a metric unit of area. The centiare equals 0.01 are, which is exactly 1 square meter (about 10.7639 square feet).

centibar (cbar or cb)
a metric unit of pressure identical with the kilopascal (kPa). One centibar equals 0.01 bar, 7.5006 torr, or 0.1450 pounds per square inch (lbf/in² or psi). The centibar is traditionally used in agriculture as a unit of soil water tension (the water pressure on the roots of plants) as measured by devices called tensiometers.

centigrade
a temperature scale; see degree centigrade.

centigram (cg)
a metric unit of mass equal to 10 milligrams or about 0.154 grain.

centihg
an informal unit of pressure equal to 1 centimeter of mercury. This is equivalent to 10 millimeters of mercury, approximately 0.3937 inHg, 0.1933 lb/in², 13.33 millibars, or 1333 pascals. The word is pronounced 'sentig'.

centiliter (cl or cL)
a common metric unit of volume. One centiliter equals 10 cubic centimeters; this is about 0.610 24 cubic inch, 0.3318 U.S.fluid ounce or 0.3519 British fluid ounce. In the kitchen, a centiliter is roughly equal to 2 U.S. teaspoons (or 0.704 British tablespoonful).

centimeter of mercury (cmHg)
a traditional unit of pressure equal to 10 mmHg, 1.333 22 kilopascal, or about 0.193 pounds per square inch.

centinewton (cN)
a metric unit of force equal to 0.01 newton. This unit has some popularity in engineering as a substitute for the gram of force (gf), since it equals about 1.019 72 gf (about 0.0360 ounces of force in the English system). In the textile industry, the breaking strength of fibers is commonly expressed in centinewtons per tex.

centipoise (cP, cPs, or cPo)
a common metric unit of dynamic viscosity equal to 0.01 poise or 1 millipascal second (mPa•s). The dynamic viscosity of water at 20 °C (68 °F) is about 1 centipoise. The correct symbol for the unit is cP, but cPs, cPo, and even cps are sometimes used.

centiradian
a unit of angle measure equal to 0.01 radian or about 0.572958° (34' 22.65').

centisecond (cs or csec)
a unit of time equal to 0.01 second or 10 milliseconds. Centiseconds are frequently used in the study of human speech to measure precisely the length of sounds.

centistokes (cSt)
a common metric unit of kinematic viscosity equal to 0.01 stokes or 1 mm²/s. The viscosity of lubricating oils and many other liquids is frequently stated in centistokes. Although the centistokes is not an SI unit it is likely to remain in use, since it provides a convenient and traditional name for an SI-appropriate quantity...

centner
a Russian weight or mass unit equal to 100 kilograms (approximately 220.4623 pounds). This centner, also used in Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics, is equal to the decitonne and to the metric quintal; it is twice the size of the centner used in western Europe.

centrad
an informal name for the centiradian (see above).

centum
the Latin number 100, sometimes used in works in English.

cf
a common symbol for the cubic foot.

CFU
abbreviation for 'colony forming units,' a count of the number of active bacterial cells in preparations of Lactobacillus acidophilus and other 'friendly' organisms of the digestive system. Counts as high as one billion CFU per gram are not uncommon.

champagne quart
see quart .

character (char)
a unit of information used in computer science and telecommunications. One character is usually equal to 8 bits or one byte. There is, however, a newer coding system designed to include all the characters used in all the world's languages; this system, Unicode, assigns 16 bits or 2 bytes to each character code.

Charrière, Charrière gauge (Ch)
a unit of distance used for measuring the diameters of small tubes such as catheters, fiber optic bundles, etc. The gauge number is the diameter of the tube in units of 1/3 millimeter. In English-speaking countries, the scale is usually called the French gauge and the unit is simply called 'French.' Charrière was a nineteenth century French ...

cheval vapeur (cv or ch)
French name for the metric horsepower. In Canadian French, however, the term is used to mean the English horsepower.

chiliad
a unit of quantity equal to 1000. The word comes from the Greek numeral 1000, chilioi, which is also the origin of the metric prefix kilo-. Pronounced 'killiad,' the chiliad was once fairly common in learned writing, but it has nearly disppeared from use today.

chiliad
another name for a millennium (1000 years).

chilo-
Italian spelling of the metric prefix kilo- (1000).

chin
one of several spellings in English for the jin, a traditional Chinese weight unit.

choi
a name used in Thailand and Laos for the viss. The word is sometimes spelled joi in English.

chopine
a traditional French unit of volume. The unit varied regionally, but by the 18th century it was more or less standardized as 23.475 cubic pouces (465.7 milliliters). The chopine is obsolete in France today, but the word survives (especially in Canada) as a French name for the English pint units.

choppin
a traditional Scottish unit of volume equal to 2 mutchkins or 1/2 Scots pint. The choppin is equivalent to about 52.1 cubic inches, 1.80 U.S. liquid pints, 1.50 British imperial pints, or 854 milliliters.

CI or ci
a traditional symbol for the cubic inch.

cicero (cc)
a unit of distance used by typesetters and printers in continental Europe, equal to 12 Didot points. This is approximately 0.1780 inch or 4.52 millimeters. The cicero corresponds to the British and American pica. Presumably, this unit got its name because type of this size was used in printing the works of classical authors such as the Roman states...

cinque
an old English word for the number 5, pronounced 'sink' and derived from the French number 5, cinq. In English history, the original Cinque Ports were Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings. The word survives today as the name for a 5-spot showing in dice, or for a 5-card in card games.

circle (cir)
the traditional unit of angle measure, divided into 2 pi radians or 360 degrees.

circular inch, circular mil (cmil)
informal units of area. A circular inch is the area of a circle one inch in diameter, and a circular mil is the area of a circle one mil in diameter. A circle of diameter d has an area of pi•d²/4, so the circular inch is equal to approximately 0.785 398 square inches or 5.067 07 square centimeters, and the circul...

civil year
a year as measured by the conventional (Gregorian) calendar, equal to 365 days in most years but 366 days in a leap year. See year .

city block
see block.

Clark degree
see degree .

clausius
a unit of entropy. Entropy is a measure of the extent to which heat or energy in a physical system is not available for performing work. It is computed in units of energy per kelvin. One clausius is equal to 1 kilocalorie per kelvin (kcal/K) or 4.1868 kilojoules per kelvin (kJ/K). The unit honors the German physicist Rudolf Clausius (1822-1888), wh...

clusec
a unit of power used to express the performance or leakage of vacuum pumps. One clusec represents a flow of 10 milliliters per second at a pressure of one micrometer (or micron) of mercury. This is equivalent to 0.01 lusec or 1.333 microwatts. The name of the unit is an acronym for 'centi-lusec.'

cmil
symbol for the circular mil (see above). Note that this is not a centimil.

coffee measure
a flat-bottomed scoop or spoon used to measure coffee in U.S. homes. The coffee measure holds 2 U.S. tablespoons (about 29.57 milliliters).

coffeespoon
a unit of volume formerly used in U.S. food recipes. A coffeespoon is 1/2 teaspoon, 1/12 fluid ounce, or about 2.5 milliliters.

collothun
an ancient Persian unit of liquid volume, equal to 1/8 artaba or (in recent centuries) about 8.25 liters.

color rendering index (CRI)
a scale used in engineering to measure the ability of an artificial lighting system to show the 'true' colors of objects, that is, the colors those object display in natural daylight out of doors. The scale is from 0 to 100, with higher numbers representing a higher degree of fidelity of color. The test procedure, developed by the Illuminating Engi...

color temperature (CCT)
a measure of the overall 'color' of a light source. The measurement is obtained by comparing the spectrum, or mix of colors (wavelengths of length), produced by the light source to the spectrum of a 'black body,' a theoretical object that absorbs all radiation falling on it. (A blackbody is also a perfectly efficient radiator of energy, its specrum...

column inch (col in)
a unit of relative area used in journalism. A column inch is an area one column wide and one inch deep. The width of a column varies; a standard size in the U.S. is 2-1/16 inch. At this width a column inch is 2.0625 square inches or about 13.31 square centimeters.

commercial acre
a unit of area used in U.S. real estate, equal to exactly 36 000 square feet or about 0.826 45 ordinary acre (0.334 45 hectare). The unit was invented by commercial realtors to express the approximate portion of an acre of subdivided land that remains to be sold in the retail market after portions are set aside (dedicated) for necessary streets and...

cooling degree day (CDD)
see degree day.

cone, cone number
a measure of temperature used by potters. Pyrometric cones are cone-shaped objects designed to soften and bend after absorbing a specific amount of heat. Potters place these cones in the kiln and observe them through peepholes; when the cone bends all the way over the proper amount of heat has been delivered to the pottery being fired. Although con...

cong
a metric unit of area used in Vietnam. One cong equals 1000 square meters, which is 0.1 hectare, 0.24177 acres, or 1196.00 square yards.

coomb or coom
a traditional British unit of volume used mostly for dry commodities. A coomb is 4 imperial bushels; this is equivalent to 5.1374 cubic feet or about 145.48 liters.

cord (cd)
in the U.S. timber industry, the cord is also used as a unit of weight for pulpwood. The weight varies with tree species, ranging from about 5200 pounds (2.36 metric tons) for pine to about 5800 pounds (2.63 metric tons) for hardwood.

count (ct)
an informal unit of volume in bartending, equal to 0.5 fluid ounce (14.8 milliliters). Bartenders usually fit bottles with pourers designed to restrict the flow to 0.5 fluid ounce per second. They can then measure a quantity of liquid by counting, 'one thousand one, one thousand two, ...' while pouring. This is much faster than using a measuring gl...

count (ct)
a measure of size used in the U.S. for shrimp and similar items described by the number of items per pound. Thus '50 count' shrimp weigh an average of 1/50 pound each.

covado, covido
Portuguese and Arabic names, respectively, for the cubit (see below). The Portuguese covado is equal to 3 palmos (66 centimeters, or 20.12 inches), while the Arabic covido is about 48 centimeters or 19 inches.

cpi
a common abbreviation for characters per inch, used in printing. The unit is also called pitch.

cps
a traditional abbreviation for cycles per second; also an incorrect symbol for the centipoise (see above).

cran
a traditional unit of volume formerly used by fishermen. The cran, originally intended to represent the volume of fish held by a barrel, was standardized at 37.5 Imperial gallons, or about 170.46 liters. This is somewhat larger than the usual Imperial barrel. In modern times, the cran is also used somewhat informally to mean a volume of fish weighi...

crannock
an old English unit of volume for grains. Never standardized, the crannock was roughly 10 bushels (350 liters).

crith
a unit of mass sometimes used in the physics and chemistry of gases. The crith is equal to the mass of a liter of hydrogen at standard temperature (0.01°C) and pressure (1 atmosphere); this is about 89.885 milligrams. The name comes from an ancient Greek word for a barleycorn.

crotchet
a unit of relative time in music equal to 1/4 whole note or 1/8 breve. The word, pronounced crotch-it, comes from the old Norse word krok for a hook; in this context it refers to the traditional hooked symbol for a quarter note.

cu
abbreviation for 'cubic,' as in cubic feet or cubic meters. This symbol is forbidden by the SI, but it remains in common use in ordinary English text. The proper symbol for cubic feet is ft³, not cu. ft.

cuadra
a traditional Latin American unit of distance. The cuadra is generally equal to 100 varas (about 84 meters or 275 feet) in Central America and northern South America. In Argentina and Chile, the cuadra is equal to 150 varas (roughly 130 meters or 410 feet).

cuadra
a traditional Latin American unit of area equal to one square cuadra . Except in Argentina and Chile, this is 10 000 square varas, generally in the range 1.75-1.85 acres (0.71-0.75 hectare). In Argentina and Chile, the cuadra was 22 500 square varas (4.18 acres or 1.69 hectare).