Hand (hh)

US & ImperialTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 4 inches (10.16 cm). Used almost only to measure the height of horses at the withers.

1 hand = 0.1016 meters (exactly).

About the hand

Horse people still say a mare stands fifteen hands, and the word is the same Old English hand that names the body part. The unit was first the breadth of a hand, with or without the thumb, or the height of a clenched fist, and the figure varied from person to person. Ancient Egyptian cubit-rods show a comparable hand of five digits, roughly 94 mm. In England, a Horses Act of 1540 under Henry VIII fixed the hand at four inches, and some later dictionaries still muddled it with the three-inch handsbreadth.

The figure used here is exactly 4 inches, or 10.16 cm. Fractions are counted in inches, not tenths, so a height written 15.2 means fifteen hands and two inches, which is 62 inches, and 15.3 is followed directly by 16.0. The height is taken at the withers, the ridge between the shoulder blades. The unit survives for horses and ponies in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, while continental Europe and international equestrian competition use metric.

Sources: Wikipedia: Hand (unit); Wiktionary: hand

Hand conversion chart

1 hand expressed in every other length unit:

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• cubic inch (volume)
• cubic foot (volume)

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