For most of the world, the metric system is well suited for measuring weight and distance. Some countries still struggle with imperial units, but there are people who like to measure their height based on the foot of a king who died in England hundreds of years ago, as the story goes.
Regardless of which method you use, there are common units of measurement, like miles or kilometers, but there are also much more obscure units of measurement, measuring things you've never even heard of. Let us introduce you to ten units of measurement you've never heard of.
10. Troubles
In 2011, internet users encountered confusion when Google Earth allowed users to measure distances. It was listed between nautical miles and degrees in the drop-down menu of units, without any explanation. Few knew what it was, inspiring blog posts and a little research.
The Smoot was named after Oliver Smoot. It refers to Smoot's height, which is 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm). In 1958, Mr. Smoot was working at MIT and pledged a fraternity there. As part of the ritual humiliation that comes with pledging, Smoot was forced to do something foolish. He and the other pledgers were taken to a bridge and told that its length had to be measured, but one of them had to be a ruler. That ruler was Smoot, so each of them who could span the bridge was one Smoot long.
Smut lay down on the bridge, and someone marked the top of his head with chalk. He stood up and lay down on the chalk mark, and they measured again, and so on. In the end, the bridge was 364.4 smuts long plus an ear, so it took some time.
9. A butt is an old way of measuring wine.
You may have heard someone casually refer to a large quantity of something as a "butt." For example, if you walked into a room and saw 100 cats, you might say, "That's a lot of cats." It sounds like a sanitized, yet semi-dirty, way of referring to a lot. But it's not. Butt is the real measuring stick.
A cigarette butt is equal to two barrels, which is as useless as saying "one perch," but at least it's colorful. A hogshead is a barrel, and if you want, you can buy them with whiskey right now. One barrel is 250 liters, or 66 gallons. This means a barrel is 500 liters, or 132 gallons. This, in turn, means that a load on the butt is a lot. This is confirmed by science.
In this case, "butt" doesn't mean the backside we think of. It's a very old word, introduced into English via Italian and French, where it originally meant "shoe." The Italian word "boote" is still used to refer to wine.
Another funny thing about cigarette butts and barrels is that they're not always the same size. For example, while one source lists a barrel for 66 gallons, others list it for 54 gallons. This should be 108 gallons, but in the US, it's 126 gallons. Now you know why no one uses it as a measurement.
8. Slug - unit of mass
Slugs aren't just slimy creatures living under dry logs; they're also units of measurement. A slug is a unit of mass, weighing about 32.2 pounds, or 32.17 pounds at sea level. What do you measure with slugs? To find out, you need to study physics.
A pound is a measure of force, not mass, which is confusing outside of physics. We use pounds to represent weight because weight measures the force of gravity. A pound is the force required to accelerate a single bullet at one foot per second squared. This is something you'll never need to know if you don't already know it.
7. The word "mega-death" refers to the number of nuclear deaths
Have you ever heard of the '80s metal band Megadeath? Their name is, well, metal. Very metal. So metal, in fact, that few people have likely ever wondered where it came from, because it sounds like a complicated word any '80s metalhead could have come up with after a beer with his buddies. But it's not! Megadeath isn't a fictitious band name; it's a unit of measurement, which, by definition, is currently the most metal unit of measurement in history.
When you're someone who has to predict the consequences of nuclear wars, you come up with some weird business jargon, and that's exactly what happened here. A megadeath is a unit of measurement used to describe the death toll in millions of people following a potential nuclear blast. So, if Chicago has a population of 2.6 million and is destroyed by a nuclear strike, the death toll would be 2.6 megadeaths.
Now you might be asking yourself why someone would use this incredibly ridiculous term to minimize the death toll from a horrible atrocity, and at the same time you might be able to answer it.
6. Kuil - a measure of surreality
People tend to overuse the word "surreal" to describe almost anything that isn't entirely mundane. Traveling is surreal, finding a job is surreal, and meeting a celebrity is surreal. Generally, the word simply means something strange or bizarre, but more accurately, it refers to something that seems detached from reality, like a dream. Surreal things are not rational.
Since surrealism is a quality that can be attributed to something, someone came up with a unit of measurement for surrealism. This seems appropriate, since, as mentioned, people often call even very non-surreal things surreal. How can you tell the difference between boring surrealism and truly, truly surrealism? Use Quill.
Cuils aren't technically real forms of measuring surreality, since they're all theoretical things anyway. The creation of a Cuil is part of an absurdist view of how bad search engines are. A Cuil is one level of abstraction from reality, so each Cuil is another level of absurdity compared to what should be normal.
Cuil had been a search engine since 2008. It indexed 120 billion web pages and was supposed to be a Google competitor. It lasted until 2010, which is impressive considering how bad things were. This is where Cuil's measurement came into play, because Cuil's searches yielded such meaningless and irrelevant results that it became a joke, so absurd it seemed surreal. How far from what you wanted could Cuil go? Thus was born a humorous form of measurement, giving rise to Cuil's theory, which you can read about if you like really weird things.
5. A noggin is half a pint or a quarter of a pint
If you're one of those people who enjoys a drink but is also very interested in how much you drink, you might know about a head. A head is a unit of measurement that's roughly equal to half a pint, except when it's not. For a while, it was a quarter pint, and then they improved it. It's the same as a gill. None of that is confusing, right?
A head is also equal to 142 cubic centimeters, which is about 0.6 cups. That's also 4.8 ounces, or just over three servings. Honestly, it's hard to say anyone measured with their head.
4. Poroncusema is how far a deer can walk before it needs to urinate.
Did you know that reindeer can't walk or pee? This is important to Finnish reindeer herders, as it led to the development of a measurement called poronkusema. One poronkusema is the distance a reindeer can walk before needing to pee. That's about 7.5 kilometers, or 4.7 miles. The fact that this measurement remains so remarkably consistent that it could be used to make measurements is impressive, when you think about it.
Translated into English, "poronkusema" roughly translates to reindeer urine. So that makes sense. It's unclear whether a poronkusema measures anything other than how far a reindeer can travel, but perhaps if they're on long trips, you could tell a friend that it's six reindeer urines, and they'll have a rough idea of when to expect you.
3. Millichelen is a mocking measurement of beauty
Scientists often have a strange sense of humor, and this led to the creation of the millihelen, a unit of beauty. This depicts Helen of Troy, who, according to legend, was very beautiful. She was called the face that launched a thousand ships. Accordingly, millihelens refer to the beauty required to launch a thousand ships, where a single Helen does the job, and less beautiful people must deal with fractions of millihelens.
One millihelen can launch one ship and is, of course, a metric unit of measurement. 500 would be considered average, and at this point you realize it's simply used to rate women's appearance on a scale of 1 to 10. Whether Helen's beauty myth referred to literal ships or metaphorical ones, if you understand our meaning, remains a matter of debate.
2. Micromort measures the risk of death as one in a million
We've already covered the horror of megadeath, but in the world of death, there's another sweet horror: micromort. Isn't it adorable? Like a little grim reaper. While megadeath is one million deaths, micromort is the risk of death, and in this case, one micromort equals one chance of death. One study found that during COVID-19, drug-related deaths rose to one micromort per day, up from 0.5 the year before.
Beyond COVID, micromorts have been around since the 1980s and offer a shorter way to say, "You have a one-in-a-million chance of being eaten by wild dogs," or any probability of dying in the distant future. For example, what are your chances of dying while scuba diving? It's five micromorts. Pretty low! While BASE jumping is 430 micromorts.
Regarding nuclear war deaths—why not discuss that?—it was determined that your chances of dying from a nuclear bomb in London, England, in 2022 were about 0.01 micromorts. So, you know, it probably won't happen. Also, in case you're wondering, on any given day, the risk for the average young person is one micromort.
1. Batman is a unit of measurement of the Ottoman Empire.
The single greatest unit of measurement in human history is Batman. Batman weighs 16.7 pounds, so he's clearly not a bloated Christian Bale version. It also dates back to the 14th century, putting him closer to Adam West.
Central Asia used a variety of regional Batmen of varying sizes, making it more reminiscent of the Spider-Verse. As one of many units of measurement, it fit into modern trade in the same way a bushel, a kilogram, or something else might be used today. Many smaller units could be combined to create a Batman, and no doubt several Batmen would add something even larger, like Darkseid or something like that.