the.com/fathom
a unit of depth that became a verb for the depths you can't measure.
means To understand something deep or difficult by thinking it through, or a unit of water depth equal to six feet.
from From Old English 'fæðm,' meaning the outstretched arms or an embrace — the span from fingertip to fingertip, roughly six feet. Sailors used that armspan to measure rope as they hauled it up, so 'fathom' became the unit for sounding depths. The figurative leap — from measuring the deep to comprehending the unfathomable — came later, but it still carries that original gesture of reaching all the way around something to take its measure.
- exact length
- six feet, the span of outstretched arms
- old roots
- from a word meaning embrace or outstretched arms
- sailor math
- depth once measured by armspans of rope
- figurative depth
- to fathom means to understand the unfathomable
- twenty thousand
- Verne's leagues measured distance, not depth