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Only true boffins will be able to grasp Blighty's new legal definitions of the humble metre and kilogram

Terry 6 Silver badge

It's also that some metric ( and decimal) measures are a tad clumsy.

A litre is too bloody small a volume for measuring petrol. No one ever puts a litre of petrol in a car.

The jump from cm to m is too big when measuring height. 5' 8" is easier to say ( and visualise, I think) than 172cm or 1m 772cm.

A kilometre is a bit too small when measuring journeys, arguably. But is reasonable for the purpose. People seem to use Km quite happily.

And use degrees C with no problem at all for the most part.

But a litre is too big for a swift pint, and who'd want to ask for half a litre? The phrase is just too clumsy and rather prissy sounding. ( Also a good linguistic rule of thumb is that people use the fewest and easiest syllables they can. Pint works better here than litre). And should you just want a half with your lunch, "Could I have 0.3 of a litre of your best ale please, landlord..." No.Just no.

Part of the problem was when they decimalised our money ( not a moment too soon imo) they determinedly set out to remove the familiar intermediate units instead of allowing them to fade slowly - or not as the case might be. These did no harm and were useful. A shilling is a shilling whether it's 5p or 12d. Saying "5 shillings" instead of 25p or "10 bob" instead of "50p" hurts no one and if it stopped being useful or clear would have gone the way of all things. But it provided useful intermediate units. "What, 5 bob for a bar of chocolate!" Sounds better than " What, 25p...etc.". I doubt these units would have been used for precise amounts, which would have encouraged a natural demise. But simply going out of their way to discourage the humble friendly shilling and its derivatives was counterproductive.

And I'd argue made people less amenable to losing pints\feet/lbs and so on.

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