{"id":6438,"date":"2024-02-01T19:02:47","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T19:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6438"},"modified":"2024-02-01T19:05:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T19:05:38","slug":"word-of-the-day-fathom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2024\/02\/01\/word-of-the-day-fathom\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Fathom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day is fathom<\/em>. As a noun, fathom<\/em> is a measurement of six feet, or 1.8 meters, and is used primarily by people on the water. When in Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest<\/em> the young Ferdinand awakes, having been through a shipwreck, the spirit Ariel sings to him. The second verse begins, \u201cFull fathom five thy father lies\u201d (1.2) It\u2019s a very well-known line, copied by later poets and songwriters, but in context it just means thirty feet down in the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a verb, fathom<\/em> means \u201cto measure the depth of by means of a sounding line\u201d or \u201cto penetrate to the truth of; comprehend; understand\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/fathom<\/a>). Boatmen would lower a rope into the water with a weight on the bottom and marks along it at six foot intervals. Steamboats along the Mississippi River risked getting stuck along the bottom of the river if the water was less than 12 feet deep. Thus the boatmen\u2019s call to indicate that the depth was safe would be \u201cmark: twain,\u201d which also gave us the name of a famous American writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can see in the verb form another example of broadening or generalization. The meaning goes from actually measuring the depth of water to measuring or understanding the depth of someone\u2019s ideas or words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fathom appears in Old English: \u201cf\u00e6\u00f0m \u2018length of the outstretched arms\u2019 (a measure of about six feet), also \u2018arms, grasp, embrace,\u2019 and, figuratively \u2018power,\u2019 from Proto-Germanic *fathmaz<\/em> \u2018embrace\u2019 (source also of Old Norse fa\u00f0mr<\/em> \u2018embrace, bosom,\u2019 Old Saxon fathmos<\/em> \u2018the outstretched arms,\u2019 Dutch vadem<\/em> \u2018a measure of six feet\u2019), from PIE *pot(\u0259)-mo-<\/em><\/strong>, suffixed form of root *pete-<\/a> \u2018to spread.\u2019 It has apparent cognates in Old Frisian fethem<\/em>, German faden<\/em> \u2018thread,\u2019 which [the Oxford English Dictionary] explains by reference to \u2018spreading out\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=fathom<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, we have an example of broadening. The word originally referred to a person\u2019s wingspan, the distance from finger tip to finger tip when a person stretched their arms out to the sides at shoulder height. That distance becomes regularized as a way to measure (compare foot<\/em>). It is interesting to note that the average height of men during the Anglo-Saxon period was less than six feet. Even the Vikings, who are often portrayed in movies and TV shows (see the UK version of Ghosts<\/em>) as very large, were only about 5\u20197? (https:\/\/www.routesnorth.com\/language-and-culture\/how-tall-were-the-vikings-heres-the-truth\/<\/a>). Maybe their wingspan was longer than their height.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ratio of wingspan to height is called, in some circles, the ape index. \u201cApe index is a term taken from rock climbing and refers to your height to wingspan ratio. First, measure your wingspan, from outstretched fingertip to fingertip. Then, divide by your height. A typical ratio is about one, with a higher number meaning your arms and wingspan are longer\u201d (https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/know-ape-index-184747144.html<\/a>). On the page with the famous image of Vitruvian Man, Leonardo Da Vinci says, \u201cThe length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of the man\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vitruvian_Man<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you watch basketball, either college or professional, you might sometimes hear a commentator talk about a team having length. You might wonder why they don\u2019t talk about height. Why length? So length is a way of saying that players on that team with length have an ape index above one. Sometimes they will actually talk about length as the number of inches more than the height someone\u2019s wingspan is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance<\/em>, David Epstein includes a chapter called \u201cThe Vitruvian NBA player.\u201d In this chapter, he asserts that NBA players generally are above one on the ape index, meaning that their wingspan is longer than their height. The Crafted NBA website documents this fact. Of the 447 players listed, 435 have a wingspan longer than their height, and only nine have a wingspan shorter than their height. The current leaders in this category are Mo Bamba of the 76ers and Talen Horton-Tucker of the Spurs, each with a wingspan 10.75\u201d longer than their height. Bamba is 6\u201911.75\u201d with a wingspan of 7\u201910\u201d. Horton-Tucker is just 6\u20192.5\u201d but stretches out at 7\u20191.25\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, just having that extra-long wingspan doesn\u2019t make you a great player. Luka Doncic\u2019s length is just 4.5\u201d, LeBron James\u2019s is just 3.75\u201d, Nikola Jokic\u2019s is just 3.5\u201d, and Steph Curry\u2019s is just 1.5\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the reason is, however, I guess I\u2019m glad that a fathom is officially six feet. If boatmen in the 19th<\/sup> century had been using Mo Bamba as their guide, our greatest American humorist would have been named Mark Onepointfivethreeonenine. I couldn\u2019t fathom studying such an author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is a side-by-side comparison of Da Vinci\u2019s Vitruvian Man with a photo of the late Manute Bol, an NBA player who was 7\u20197\u201d tall with a wingspan of 8\u20196\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day is fathom. As a noun, fathom is a measurement of six feet, or 1.8 meters, and is used primarily by people on the water. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[238,395,529,530,284],"class_list":["post-6438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-fathom","tag-length","tag-linguistics","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6441,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6438\/revisions\/6441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}