Grimman Units of Measurement

Unit names derived from Grimman words are translated into English and capitalized. This reflects the Grimman usage of a "mental inflection" in speech and an indicator symbol in writing to show the word represents a unit of measurement.

Length

Traditional

Never entirely superceded by the Scientific system. Grimmans still make things in round numbers of Traditional units. Used in the design of the spaceport, the paraports, and spaceships, which is why it's being detailed here.

• The Grimman Foot is the basic unit of length. About the average length of an unshod adult male's foot, about 8 inches U.S.
• There are twelve Toes to the Grimman Foot. This is a really ancient Grimman joke; Grimmans only have five actual toes per foot. The Toe is about the average width of an adult male's second toe, about 2/3rds of an inch.
• Three Feet make a Stride. About two feet U.S., and several inches shorter than the average adult Grimman stride, a side effect of an ancient effort to rationalize the system.
• Six Strides make one Walk. About 12 feet U.S., traditionally the amount spacing between dwellings for fire safety (they were small dwellings back then). The expression "taking a Walk" means "visiting the neighbors." The Walk is the basis for the Scientific length system, described below.
• 360 Walks make one March. About 4319 feet U.S. About the practical limit for the Grimmans Telesend ability. In ancient times, anti-brudho patrols would range out about one March from the clan hold in a hexagonal pattern, keeping them in telepathic communication with each other and the clan hold. (Let's see...actually only adjacent patrols would be able to "hear" each other. The patrol on the far side of the clan hold would be two Walks away, so they used a mind-to-mind relay system.)
• 450 Walks make one Silence. About 5399 feet U.S., or a little over one mile. Just beyond the practical Telesend limit. In ancient times, this is how far one would go from the clan hold to get away from it all. Doing so could be very dangerous -- one might run into brudho or predators and be "eaten by the Silence." "Going into the Silence" is an expression for going off on an adventure. "Don't get eaten by the Silence" is a snarky comment that the addressee is being antisocial. An early brag of the radio-equipped Mercenaries' Guild was that "we can hear the Silence." To emphasize this, they built their early-industrial military bases to be about one Silence across. Later, this became the standard size for paraports and the cross-sectional size of the Great Brick class spaceship hulls.
• 24 Marches make one Daymarch. A little under 20 miles. This is about how far a Grimman can go on foot in one day, allowing time for foraging along the way.
• 60 Daymarches make one Dominion, about 1177 miles, the largest defined unit of length under the Traditional system. Somewhat infamous because it has its origins in a cartographic error. The peace treaty that ended the Polyopolitan War defined the Regrim Dominion as extending 60 Daymarches west of the coast. This was supposed to be the distance from the coast to the Misty River. Actually, it fell short of this distance by about 10%, a fact that nearly precipitated a second Polyopolitan War. It was discovered that the terrain features used to caluculate the distance had actually moved around since the maps had been made, and the total error added up to a 10% increase in the distance. The Grimmans learned to have a flexible attitude about borders and boundaries. This helped them get along with each other but got them in trouble when they encountered species not as flexible on the issue as they were.

Scientific

The basic unit of length is the Walk (laam in regrimvlav or Grimman Standard Language, hereafter "Grimman"). The other units are powers of 12, as Grimmans use a base 12 number system (chosen for esthetic reasons, not because Grimmans have 12 digits). The Grimman infix meg means "to the power of," while "mig" means "to the negative power of." When the base is not specified, 12 is assumed. So the unit name is a numeric prefix indicating magnitude, meg or mig, plus laam. Thus, ammeglaam is 12 Walks, and ammiglaam is 1/12th of a Walk. Some of the units have common names. Some Grimman numbers: an, dol, drev, gvar, pinf, gegd, gevd, agd, mev, tes, tan, dvo

• ammiglaam, 1/12 of a Walk, also a Halfstride, dolnkpud, just under 1 foot U.S.
• dolmiglaam, 1/144th of a Walk, also a Bigtoe, megdpeg, a little under 1 inch
• ammeglaam, 12 Walks, a little under 144 feet U.S.
• dolmeglaam, 144 Walks, also a Shortmarch, gordpadaan, 1728 feet U.S.
• drevmeglaam, 1728 Walks, a Fivemarch, pinfpadaan, a little under 5 miles.
• gvarmeglaam, 20736 Walks, a Twodaymarch, doldurpadaan, (actually closer to two and a half), a little over 47 miles
• pinfmeglaam, 248832 Walks, a Halfdomain, dolnkdlaun, about 565 miles
• gegdmeglaam, 12⁶ Walks, a Worlddomain, lathdlaun, 6784 miles

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Copyright © 2007 by Richard C. McCluney, III