When they say 20,000 leagues under the sea who came up with the word league and how big is a leaugue?
Answers:
Quoting the source web site:
"league
a traditional unit of distance. Derived from an ancient Celtic unit and adopted by the Romans as the leuga, the league became a common unit of measurement throughout western Europe. It was intended to represent, roughly, the distance a person could walk in an hour. The Celtic unit seems to have been rather short (about 1.5 Roman miles, which is roughly 1.4 statute miles or 2275 meters), but the unit grew longer over time. In many cases it was equal to 3 miles, using whatever version of the mile was current. At sea, the league was most often equal to 3 nautical miles, which is 1/20 degree [2], 3.45 statute miles, or exactly 5556 meters. In the U.S. and Britain, standard practice is to define the league to be 3 statute miles (about 4828.03 meters) on land or 3 nautical miles at sea. However, many occurrences of the "league" in English-language works are actually references to the Spanish league (the legua), the Portuguese league (legoa) or the French league (lieue). For these units, see below on this page."
Main Entry: 1league
Pronunciation: 'lEg
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English leuge, lege, from Late Latin leuga
1 : any of various units of distance from about 2.4 to 4.6 statute miles (3.9 to 7.4 kilometers)
In the story Verne does not mean they are 20,000 leagues below the surface of the sea but the title pertains to the distance they traveled under the sea.
wow I learned something today, good question and great answers
In common nautical usage, a league is 3 nautical miles.
A knot is a unit of speed, 1 nautical mile per hour
A nautical mile is one minute of latitude.
1 league = 3.45233834 miles
1 league = 3 nautical miles
1 nautical mile = 1.15077945 miles
So 20,000 leagues under the sea would be 60,000 nautical miles, or 69046 miles.
A league was a Roman term meaning the distance that a man could walk in one hour.
I found this link for a good website, The National Maritime Museum in Britain.
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/
A league is three miles.
In terms of water depth, pretty sure it is 6ft.
6 feet is a fathom, Split Dog
+ Half a league, Half a league, Half a league onward into the valley of death rode the six hundred.
Sorry, I could not resist the quote. Here is the easy "but not exact" way to look at it.
a league is 3 miles (at sea 6,000 yards) = 60 US football fields
a knot is a nautical mile (about 2,000 yards) = 4 aircraft carriers end to end.
The word league although in existence for like since history, was made more popular by the authors Tennyson and Jules Verne.
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