1069: Metric versis Imperial (inch and ounce) Nov 12, 2017

In the same way that the arrangement of streets for old cities are arguably less logical than those of new ones because people had the ability to plan new cities more, newer words for units of measurement tend to be more structured as well, but this is not to say that older systems like the Imperial System never had any reasoning. Words like 'meter', or 'gram' come from words that mean 'measure' and 'small weight' in Greek and Latin respectively, and how prefixes in the metric system come from words that denote powers of ten in Greek and Latin, because the metric system was designed to be easy for conversions, and people creating it had the ability to plan and standardize more easily than for the Imperial System. In that system, words would either relate to measurements for practical things like lengths of fields, or would relate to fractions. Both 'inch' and 'ounce' come from the Latin 'uncia' meaning 'twelfth' (ounces are a twelfth of a pound troy); twelve was historically more often used, which it still is for time, as it is better for simple divisions than ten, as it has more factors.