also same as pole Baron Carter -----Original Message----- From: James R. Frysinger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 11 July, 2001 11:50 To: U.S. Metric Association Cc: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:14316] Re: Ireland About a year ago or a bit more, we had a discussion on perches. A perch (lineal) is the same as rod (5.5 yd or 16.5 ft). A perch (areal) is a square perch (lineal). The origin of the word, as I recall our conclusion to be, was French (Middle French?) and it was a similar word meaning "stick" or long piece of wood. "Perch" makes me think of a tree limb with a bird sitting on it, which is more or less consistent with the above. Perhaps that's where our verb "to perch" came from. Jim Bruce Raup wrote: > > On 2001-07-11 09:42 -0600, Bruce Raup wrote: > > > On 2001-07-11 14:58 -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > In Killarney I saw an ad for land. It measured 37 acres 3 roods 15 perches. The > > > > According to the GNU "units" program, a rood is 1/4 of an acre, which is > > consistent with acres, but a perch is 5.5 US yards, or about 5.03 m. This > > doesn't seem to make sense, since it's used as an area. Is there a > > different definition of perch -- perhaps akin to the way the "yard" is > > used in the US to mean cubic yard? > > > > Bruce > > Nevermind. Just found the answer in > http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictP.html: > > perch [2] > a unit of area equal to one square perch [1]. A perch of area > covers exactly 272.25 square feet or about 25.292 85 square meters. There > are 40 perches in a rood and 160 perches in an acre. > > Bruce -- Metric Methods(SM) "Don't be late to metricate!" James R. Frysinger, CAMS http://www.metricmethods.com/ 10 Captiva Row e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Charleston, SC 29407 phone/FAX: 843.225.6789
