I hope it’s not against the rules here, just saw this woodworking related xkcd that I enjoyed and thought it might be appreciated here:)
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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It's not often that I'm surprised by some of the divisors that appear in US Customary or Imperial units, but I'm now shuddering to imagine what sort of horrific system of unit names have been built atop this fact of twos-powers fractions of a foot.
Knowing the English, they'll likely have invented a name during the medieval time for 1/8th of a foot (1.5 inches), like dozebarleycorn, since a barleycorn is already 1/3 of an inch. And then 3/4" might be a demidoze, or some such insanity. The horror, the horror.
Or they'd pull a Worcestershire and pronounce "Inch and a half" as a "chunnauff." Gotta get that unnecessary U in there somewheure.
2 weeks is a fortnight, so is 2 feet a fortinch?
I'm informed the British do read the time 6:30 as "half six", a shortened form of "half past six". So "inch an a half" might become "incuax", pronounced as "in-cha" and containing the unnecessary U, and an X for that Norman/French faux lineage.
Naturally, Americans would instead pronounce it as "in-coh", which would destroy any understanding when also speaking about Incoterms.
In Kentucky it's a "tuba-fur"
In the Carolinas it's a tew-bah-fower. It's made of yella pahn, bout ate feet lawng, they got a whole mess of em down at the Lowe's, most of em are sigogglin these days.
I'd say 14 inches is a fortinch duh