Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 May 14

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May 14

"United States customary units"

We have an article on United States customary units, which is a useful term for what my dad used to call "English units", but which are definitely not the same as Imperial units. I have adopted this term.

But I'm wondering where it comes from (the term, not the system of units). Is it Wikigenic? Or was this terminology in use, systematically in the wild, before our article? We should in general strain to avoid making up terminology using Wikipedia, though in this case I would probably keep using the term anyway given that there's no other really good name. --Trovatore (talk) 22:06, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Reviewing Newspapers.com (pay site) for the term "U. S. Customary Units", it first turns up in the early 1960s, often in discussions about the supposed superiority of the metric system. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:25, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

At least a better term than the confusing and US-centric "standard units" I have encountered online. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:21, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

A term which seems to have been basically created on Wikipedia is Oxford spelling, but this wasn't discovered until 2010, and there didn't seem to be anything better to rename it to, so the article title remains... AnonMoos (talk) 01:12, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

This spelling was promulgated by The Oxford Spelling Dictionary, published in 1986, so its being referred to as "Oxford spelling" instead of "spelling of The Oxford Spelling Dictionary" or "Oxford University Press house spelling" was kind of unavoidable ([1], [2]).  --Lambiam 06:53, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Anyhow, see Units of Weight and Measure (United States Customary and Metric}, United States National Bureau of Standards, 1960.

So apparently the US Government made it up. Alansplodge (talk) 09:55, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

The exact term is also used in these earlier works:

Conference on the Weights and Measures of the United States: Volumes 8-9 (1914), p. 124, and

Measurements of Length and Area: Including Thermal Expansion, Volumes 2-19 (1912), p. 8.

Again, these are United States National Bureau of Standards publications, so it looks as though they are the culprits. Alansplodge (talk) 10:09, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I have added a brief note to United States customary units#History should the question ever arise again. Alansplodge (talk) 12:25, 15 May 2024 (UTC)