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While answering another question I used the English word furlong which is obsolete in usage, at least in the UK, except for in horse racing. This set me thinking about Spanish usage. For instance I remember colleagues referring to different sizes of floppy discs using the term pulgada but that I suppose is really because they were originally named in inches in English and converting to an exact number of millimetres would have been absurd.

There is a long list of candidates in the Spanish edition of Wikipedia here. Are any of these still in popular use? I think we should probably exclude any which are only used in a stock phrase like the English phrase "To hide one's light under a bushel"

It would be best if there is an example of a whole area of application which has clung to the old system like the example of horse racing in the UK which still uses the old terms for both weight and length.

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  • We also measure TV and monitor sizes in inches. Just to clarify, in the answers we should avoid sentences like "tirar millas", shouldn't we?
    – Charlie
    Oct 19, 2017 at 14:27
  • Considero esta pregunta un poco "too broad". Sugiero crear un post-respuesta tipo wiki con esas entradas, y que la gente diga para cada una si sí o si no, como en el comentario de Carlos. O quizá yo no entiendo la pregunta. Qué tipo de respuesta se espera para esta pregunta?
    – Diego
    Oct 19, 2017 at 14:44
  • @Diego ¿el comentario de qué Carlos? :-D En todo caso, no pide una lista, sino solo si alguno se usa, es una pregunta de sí/no.
    – Charlie
    Oct 19, 2017 at 14:47
  • Plamo también se usa. Por ejemplo "No levanta ni un palmo del suelo. Igual con dedo si no me equivoco. Quien no tiene "dos dedos de frente" es porque tiene un cráneo reducido en el que no cabe un cerebro.
    – Diego
    Oct 19, 2017 at 14:47
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    @Diego pero pide evitar frases hechas como las que mencionas, sino cosas que de verdad sea habitual medir con alguna de las medidas pre-sistema métrico.
    – Charlie
    Oct 19, 2017 at 14:49

6 Answers 6

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The fanega is still used in private contracts between rural land owners when buying or selling land.

I know this because I have copies of one such contract, from the 90s, for the renting of 3 fanegas of land; and I doubt that contract is "one of a kind".
Sadly, I can't get a picture of the contract right now (I might update later with one).

As an alternate source, I found this forum with people discussing land renting prices in pesetas per fanega in 2011. Same forum, another user looking to sell an 18 fanegas olive-tree terrain.

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    No soy marino por lo que no sé si se sigue usando el nudo (una milla marina por hora) para medir la velocidad de las embarcaciones. En el caso de la aeronáutica, seguro que sí.
    – Jdamian
    Oct 19, 2017 at 21:11
  • Mis padres tienen algunas fincas pequeñas heredadas de mis abuelos, y muchas veces también usan el término "fanega" para refererirse a su superficie. No sólo por escrito, sino en conversaciones informales.
    – Alicia
    Oct 27, 2017 at 11:26
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En Argentina es completamente estándar usar libras para la presión de los neumáticos (propiamente, libra por pulgada cuadrada). Así que son dos medidas (libra y pulgada) que se usan en ese caso.

En aviación, es obligatorio para los aviones tener los altímetros en pies, y los velocímetros en millas por hora o en nudos. Curiosamente, la misma reglamentación no se aplica a los planeadores, y volábamos con altímetro en metros y velocímetro en km/h.

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In Colombia the corn and rice and most grains are still sold in arrobas (25 pounds = 11.5 kg) but the price is given by kg. (see http://www.corabastos.com.co/ lista de precios/granos)

Another unconventional unit of measure used frequently today is bulto or sack which is 50kg. This is used for potatos and all kinds of things that can be packed in a sack as well as cement.

As a coffee country we deal this beauty in carga and in arroba (https://www.federaciondecafeteros.org/static/files/precio_cafe.pdf) where 1 carga is 125 kg. Carga comes from the number of bultos a mule is able to carry.

enter image description here http://www.lapatria.com/manizales/video-la-carga-lomo-de-mula-165566

A measure a little less used but still used on rural areas is pucha. They made a wooden box of 20x20x4 cms internal measurements, and you can buy rice, beans, etc. by puchas so instead of buying those products by weight you are buying them by volumen.
In the same way there are boxes for Cuartillo and media pucha. enter image description here

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In Chile, wholesale flour is still sold per quintal, that is, in cotton or paper bags of approximately 46 kilograms. However, this measure no longer exists in the new sacks of plastic mesh, so now we also buy "quintal de 40 kilos" and "quintal de 50 kilos" (that is, in metric units).

In southern Chile, almud is still used, which is a rather arbitrary measure of the volume of potatoes and other farm products.

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En fútbol americano se usan las yardas para hablar de las distancias en el campo, independientemente del país en el que estés. El campo reglamentario está marcado en yardas y no tiene sentido hablar de otras medidas de longitud. Cierto que es un deporte originario de EEUU y mayoritaramente practicado allí, pero bueno, en otros países se sigue también y en ningún momento se usan los metros para referirse a las diferentes líneas del campo.

Curiosamente, en rugby se usan metros, a pesar de que son deportes relativamente similares. ¿Quizás porque el rugby es de origen europeo?

Quizás haya otros deportes en los que suceda esto (ahora no se me ocurre ninguno).

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In some zones of Colombia it's still used the word plaza as surface unit. Wikipedia says it's also called fanegada. A plaza is 6.400 m2.

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