Shaftment
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Image:Hand Units of Measurement.PNG
Hand-derived units of measurement:
1: Shaftment
2: Hand or handbreadth, commonly used to represent the width of the palm, sometimes including the thumb when closed against the palm
3: Palm, sometimes also represented by four fingers held together, which is slightly less than the true width of the palm at the knuckle
4: Span
5: Finger or fingerbreadth
6: Digit slightly smaller than a finger)
1: Shaftment
2: Hand or handbreadth, commonly used to represent the width of the palm, sometimes including the thumb when closed against the palm
3: Palm, sometimes also represented by four fingers held together, which is slightly less than the true width of the palm at the knuckle
4: Span
5: Finger or fingerbreadth
6: Digit slightly smaller than a finger)
The shaftment is a unit of length, usually 7 inches or 2 palms, i.e. 15.24 cm. It is based on the average distance from the tip of the outstretched thumb to the other side of the palm of an adult human male. In English, this unit has mostly fallen out of use, as have others based on the human arm: digit (1/8 shaftment), finger (7/48 shaftment), palm (1/2 shaftment) hand (2/3 shaftment), span (1.5 shaftments), cubit (3 shaftments) and ell (7.5 shaftments)-->.
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