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This week’s question was sent to us by Jojo from Guangdong saying she had seen sentences with the phrases ‘six foot six’ and ‘five four’ in them. They were wondering what this meant and if it was a way to talk about height.

Jojo guessed correctly that this is a way to talk about height in the UK.

There are different measuring systems that exist in the UK. One is called the metric system, which is the official system to use in public life such as in shops and on official forms. This uses metres, centimetres, kilometres, kilograms, litres.

At eight foot one, Zhao Liang is possibly the world's tallest man

However, an older more traditional system is called the imperial system. It's a way of measuring things mainly related to nature or body parts so you could have a good idea of how long or deep things were by comparing them to distances on your body, or things you use in everyday life.

This system is still used unofficially by lots of people in the UK (and in other countries too). And even in public life for example, beer is still sold in pints (which is around half a litre) and road signs in Britain and cars still use miles rather than kilometres.

The way people talk about height in the UK is another example of this. The old imperial system had measurements of feet and inches.

1 inch = 2.5cm

1 foot = 12 inches (which is around 30.5cm)

Note that when using the word foot for measurements, the plural is feet and foot (unlike the body part foot, whose plural is always feet).

So if you ask someone how tall they are they might say: six foot, or six feet (1.83 metres). They might say they are six foot six, or six feet six (1.98 metres). This is a short way of saying six feet and six inches. An even shorter form you might hear is six six.

We hope that has helped you Jojo. Thank you for your question.

If you have a question about the English, we will try our best to answer it for you. There are all kinds of language questions on our website - just email your question to [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

Glossary 詞匯