{"id":9327,"date":"2013-11-08T17:23:09","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T17:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=9327"},"modified":"2013-11-08T17:23:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T17:23:09","slug":"thumbs-and-inches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=9327","title":{"rendered":"Thumbs and inches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I discovered today that the French word for thumb, <em>pouce<\/em>, also means inch, which makes sense as the length of the inch is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.factmonster.com\/ipka\/A0769529.html\">apparently<\/a> based on the width of a man&#8217;s thumb.<\/p>\n<p>Related expressions include:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; se tourner les pouces, se rouler les pouces =  to twiddle one&#8217;s thumbs<br \/>\n&#8211; manger sur le pouce = to grab a quick bite to eat (&#8220;to eat on the thumb&#8221;)<br \/>\n&#8211; d\u00e9jeuner\/d\u00eener sur le pouce = to have a quick lunch\/dinner (&#8220;to lunch\/dine on the thumb&#8221;)<br \/>\n&#8211; donner un coup de pouce \u00e0 quelqu&#8217;un = to help someone out (&#8220;to give a blow of the thumb to sb&#8221;)<br \/>\n&#8211; mettre les pouces = to throw in the towel; to give in; to give up (&#8220;to put the thumbs&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>The word inch comes from the Latin word <em>uncia<\/em> (a twelfth; ouce; inch), as does the word ounce, which is a twelfth of a troy pound [<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Inch\">source<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>The word for inch is the same as the word for thumb in Italian (<em>pollice<\/em>), Dutch and Afrikaans (<em>duim<\/em>), and Czech and Slovak (<em>palec<\/em>). How about in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I discovered today that the French word for thumb, pouce, also means inch, which makes sense as the length of the inch is apparently based on the width of a man&#8217;s thumb. Related expressions include: &#8211; se tourner les pouces, se rouler les pouces = to twiddle one&#8217;s thumbs &#8211; manger sur le pouce = [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,99,102,104,111,128,10,60,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afrikaans","category-czech","category-dutch","category-english","category-french","category-italian","category-language","category-slovak","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}