I’ve learned about them in school, but I’ve never heard anyone say something is 8 decameters long or anything like that. I’m an American.
From my experience in Norway, these are typical in context of daily speech:
Weight (gram): tonne (a substitute name for Mg (Mega)), kg, hg, g, mg, μg (mostly in medicine)
Distance (meter): mil (10 km), km, m, dm (kinda rare), cm, mm
Volume (liter): l, dl, cl, ml
In my experience, the deca-predix is very rarely used. Most of the missing prefixes are just substituted for numbers, i.e. saying “a thousand kilometers” is much more common that “a megameter”. Of course, this differs depending on context, as a lot of the prefixes become more common within scientific fields where the sizes are common.
On a separate note, even the numbers can be a bit inconsistent. It has bothered me that it’s often common to say “a thousand milliard” instead of “one billion” (also note that we use the long scale).
μm and nm used in engineering and science fields fairly frequently
In Germany Hectoliter is also used to calculate beer volume in commercial settings, like planning for a bar or a festival.
„Kommerziell“
From my experience in Norway, these are typical in context of daily speech: (…) km, m, dm (kinda rare), cm, mm
Don’t forget the Scandinavian mile! You and the Swedes use it all the time.
Not sure how I forgot that! Will edit it in!
No, some measurements just aren’t used, even when they’d be a good fit.
Like lengths. We never use anything above km. Even for things like space, we say “million km” rather than gigametre.
The closest we come to hectometre is hectare, which is used for land area.
I’d say we use every 3 prefixes, nanometerw, micrometers, mm, m, km, than any much higher than that usually uses space units (parsecs, AU, lightyears, etc.)
Megameters are sometimes used, that’s not true.
Where do you live and what is your profession? I have heard anyone use megameter seriously.
Germany, studying Cybersecurity. They are used in astronomy through, only a hobby if me.
My astrophysicist friend used them sometimes. I knew her in Texas. She’s moved around tho
Who uses megametres? It’s not something I’ve ever heard in the UK.
A megameters is 1.000.000 meters.
They are “technically correct” measurements since they are a valid prefix, and could be used if you wanted. but they are very infrequently used in any industry. Since most of the time measurements are better served by higher precision (just using Meters) or need no precision at all over long distance (switch to kilometers), no need for excess measurement types unless necessary
Bro skips right past centimetres.
Well he asked about deca and hectometers, which are all larger-than meters.
But the same kind of rules apply below the decimal point as above it. We have millimeters (0.001 extreme precision), centimeters (0.01 high precision), and meters (1 low-ish precision). Decimeters (0.1) exist but are rarely used since both meters and centimeters can get the same result. Micro meters and nanometers are also used more frequently, but it becomes industry specific when actually doing things that small.
Centimetres and meters are the two I use the most and see the most used, then kilometres at a close third.
For distance, no. Day to day we use mm, cm, m and km. But in more specialised settings (e.g. construction) I’ve seen sometimes decameters.
For weight yes, grams, hectograms, kg, tons. Liquids is usually ml, cl, liters, hectoliters (not sure it’s spelt that way).
In labs I’ve also seen also micro and nano of all three units.
Use cubes for water. Short for cubic meter. That is 1 meter by 1 meter by 1 meter which is also exactly 1000 liters.
This is one of the convenient metric parameters where they made an easy conversion allowing you to precisely use distance to calculate volume.
I used to do land surveying in Canada and we’d use “decs” for decimetres when laying out points. You’d put down the rod, they’d tell you something like “dec and a half left” then you’d move closer and it’d be “two cents right” and you’d be even closer and then it’s like “3 mils right.” Then you’d take the shot and they’d tell you how much closer or farther you’d have to go to get the point. If you were way off to the point where you might have tens of metres, usually for rough layout we’d rarely use “dee-kays” for dekameters, but typically it would be just “30 metres north”.
I can only tell you about how we do it here in the Netherlands, but very rarely.
We have highway location markers (in the form of a little pole and a sign with some markings on them) every hundred meters. Their official name is “afstandspaal” but people generally call them “hectometerpaal” because they denote the distance along a highway in hectometers.
When you hear about traffic jams, speed cameras, or car accidents on the radio, they’ll usually announce highway number and hectometer pole number so drivers know where to look.
The metric tonne (1000kg) is used rather than a megagram even though megagram is more fun to say. This is for historic reasons, mostly. Having Mg (megagrams) and mg (milligrams) next to each other would probably also just confuse people.
Hectares (100x100m, or 10000m²) are used to denote area for things like farms. Centiliters and deciliters are used for very specific purposes (medical and such).
As for general distance: meters and kilometers work fine. Same with grams and kilograms. Smaller measurements like centimeters and millimeters are also common (or milliliters and liters, rarely centiliters but you do see them in some recipes).
Funnily enough, we (although I notice it mostly among older people) do use ons and pond (ounce and pound), although an ons is 100 grams and a pond is 500 grams. Just like with the tonne, we adjusted them to make dealing with SI units easier; we did the same with the mijl (mile) and other units similar to the imperial name as a transition to the normal metric system. Technically speaking, you’re not allowed to sell advertise products by the ons or pond anymore (thanks, IJkwet of 1937) but if you ask anyone at market for a pound if cheese, they’ll know how much to get you.
Lastly, there are a few use cases where the inch is used. Screens are measured in inches for reasons I’m not entirely sure about (probably British and American exports). This leads to some rather silly phone spec sheets, listing width/length/height in centimeters and a screen diagonal in inches. We don’t even use a Dutch word for inch!
We do have a perfectly good word for inch : duim (thumb)
Perhaps, but I’ve never heard anyone say they have a 60 duim TV.
I’m all for some Bond tegen Leenwoorden changes to bring duimen back to the masses, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
These two specifically - I don’t think I’ve ever seen them.
Hectoliters are sometimes used e.g. for measuring beer consumption for an event, decimeters in some informal contexts, some country commonly describe drink sizes in centiliters or deciliters.
Centimeters are common, I’d say more common than millimeters in informal context.
In France “hectare” (10 000m²) is used for fields and burning forest. Beside that deca or hectometers are never used
An hectare is 10.000 m2
And we use hectolitres for wine production
Mb it’s 100m*100m
Hectares are also standard in Australia
Nz too apart from old people who still use acres.
Sweden uses decimeters and deciliters
Sweden also uses mil for distance, which is 10^4 meters (10 km)
And hectograms. We just shorten it to ”hekto” though. It’s how we buy stuff from the deli. ”2 hekto salami please”.
The silly Austrians would ask for “20 Deka Salami, bitte.” It’s weird.
Sweden is also the only country in the world to have a sensible use of the word ‘miles’ (or ‘mil’ in Swedish):
10km = 1 mil
They use this a lot when speaking of travel distances longer than 20km.
In Canada anything over 20km is referenced as time. “it’s about an hour drive”
German with a scientific background. I can deduce the meaning of the words but I’ve never seen them used. I’m not even sure these units of measurement were mentioned when these were discussed. Most stuff is ton, kilogram, gram, miligram, microgram; kilometer, meter, centimeter, milimeter, micrometer. Rarely decimeter are thrown around.
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In metric units, we primarily use the x1000 or x1/1000 steps, with a few notable exceptions. We use the centimeter (1cm = 1/100m) quite commonly, the centiliter (1cl = 1/100l) is also relatively common with drinks, and, IIRC, the Austrians use the deka, short for decagram (1dg = 10g).
It depends on the situation, sometimes they are really handy but most of the time we stick to kilo, centi and mili.
Where i live, Hecto (100x) is used, for example to measure distances and areas for big properties. 1 hectometro equalls 100 m, or 1 hectarea (hm^2) equals 10000 m^2.
Also, it is widely use for pressure, cause 1 atm is 1013 hPa
Decameters are used but for special situations, like quantifying natural gas consumption
Dekametre and hectometre, rarely. Mostly mm, cm, m, km.
In Europe, hg is relatively common, whereas in Canada, prices for deli products are “per 100 g” instead of per hg.
Also in Europe, cl and dl are common in recipes and bottles of alcohol, but in Canada, almost uniquely mL and L. (And yes, lowercase litre in Europe, but uppercase Litre in Canada, although that’s gradually changing.)
In America, I’ve seen nurses and diabetics use deciliters in reference to medication or concentration before.
Deci is 0.1 and that gets used frequently, deka is 10 and never gets used at all, except in Austria when grocery shopping at the deli counter. 🤷
Hekto is 100 and similarly never gets used, not even by Austrians.
Norwegian here, hekto gets used when buying fresh meat or fish
Hecto is used in NL for road marks. You’ll find a sign every hectometer on the highway. Makes it easy to tell where you are.
Deciliters are not infrequently used in recipes here as well. I’ve never seen decameters or hectometers used by anyone.