1549: elbow and ell Mar 11, 2019

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Elbows could be associated with other sorts of bending bows, but what they shouldn't be associated with is ells—etymologically speaking—as in a 90º bend: L. While that is one meaning of 'ell', the 'el-' in 'elbow' comes from 'ell', the meaning in this case is different; it actually is an old unit of measurement, which, like the cubit, was the length of one's arm: about 45in/114cm, or more traditionally, 6 wide handbreadths. It should be noted that like 'longyards', 'longtons', 'longmiles', and 'long-hundreds' and their non-long counterparts, a handbreadth is not the same as a wide handbreadth, as otherwise an ell would only be 24in.

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