finger (unit) on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
A finger (sometimes fingerbreadth or finger's breadth) is any of several units of measurement that are approximately the width of an adult human finger, including:
The digit, also known as digitus or digitus transversus (Latin), dactyl (Greek) or dactylus, or finger's breadth — of an inch or of a foot.
In
A finger (sometimes fingerbreadth or finger's breadth) is any of several units of measurement that are approximately the width of an adult human finger, including:
The digit, also known as digitus or digitus transversus (Latin), dactyl (Greek) or dactylus, or finger's breadth — of an inch or of a foot.
In medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...
and related disciplines (anatomy, radiology, etc.) the fingerbreadth (literally the width of a finger) is an informal but widely used unit of measure.
In the measurement of distilled spirits
Liquor (or a spirit) is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, vegetables, or sugar, that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. Other terms for liquor include: spirit drink, distilled beverage or hard li ...
, a finger of whiskey refers to the amount of whiskey that would fill a glass to the level of one finger wrapped around the glass at the bottom.
Another definition (from Noah Webster
Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5– ...
): "nearly an inch."
Finger is also the name of a longer unit of length used in cloth measurement, specifically, one eighth of a yard or 4 inches.
In English these units have mostly fallen out of use, apart from the common use in distilled drinks and drinking games.
See also
*Digit (unit)
The digit or finger is an ancient and obsolete non- SI unit of measurement of length. It was originally based on the breadth of a human finger. It was a fundamental unit of length in the Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hebrew, Ancient Greek an ...
* Finger tip unit In medicine, a finger tip unit (FTU) is defined as the amount of ointment, cream or other semi-solid dosage form expressed from a tube with a 5 mm diameter nozzle, applied from the distal skin-crease to the tip of the index finger of an adult.F ...
References
Units of length Human-based units of measurement {{Standard-stub