Meters to Leguas (m to legua)

1 meter equals 0.0001794473023 leguas (rounded).

1 meter = 0.0001794473023 leguas

How to convert meters to leguas

To convert meters to leguas, multiply the number of meters by 0.0001794473023. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply leguas by 5,572.666667 (rounded).

leguas = meters × 0.0001794473023

Example: 10 meters = 0.001794473023 leguas.

Approximate value. Standards for the legua (Castilian) varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Meter (m)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of length. Since 1983 it is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Meter comes from the Greek metron, a measure. In 1791 the French National Assembly defined it as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle through Paris, after rejecting the length of a seconds pendulum because that length changes with local gravity. The surveyors Delambre and Méchain measured the meridian arc, and in 1799 a platinum bar known as the Mètre des Archives became the physical standard. NIST notes that this Earth-based meter turned out to be about 0.2 mm shorter than the true pole-to-equator fraction it was meant to represent.

The 1875 Treaty of the Meter created the CGPM and the BIPM to look after common standards, and in 1889 a platinum-iridium prototype bar took over; the original is still kept at the BIPM. In 1960 the meter was tied to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of an orange-red krypton-86 line, and in 1983 to the speed of light, which made length a quantity derived from the time standard. The 2018 revision reworded that definition without changing the meter's size. NIST offers a handy yardstick for scale: a pace, meaning two steps, is roughly a meter or a yard.

The meter is the reference unit for length on this site.

Sources: BIPM: history of the metre; NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition; Wikipedia: Metre

Legua (Castilian) (legua)

Spanish & PortugueseHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

About 5.57 km, equal to 6,666⅔ varas. The standard Spanish league; Portugal and Latin America used different values.

Spanish legua is a descendant of the Roman leuga, itself taken from an older Celtic distance used in Gaul. In medieval Castile it was reckoned as three Spanish miles, so its real length depended on the local foot and on how carefully a road was paced out. A decree of Philip II in 1568 abolished the older legal league of roughly 4.18 km and set the league at about 5.57 km, the figure used here.

That league was fixed at 20,000 Castilian feet, which the Spanish law of 1801 later expressed as 6,666 and two thirds varas. It served for overland travel, for describing the extent of colonial land grants, and, as a square league, for ranch and estate areas in Texas and Mexico. Spanish America never agreed on one value: Mexico used a league of 5,000 varas near 4.19 km, Chile about 4.51 km, and Buenos Aires about 5.15 km.

A later legua nueva of 8,000 varas, close to 6.69 km, was also defined in 1766. Today a Castilian legua is a little under three and a half modern statute miles, and the word survives in place names and in loose speech for a walking hour.

1 legua (Castilian) = 5,572.666667 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: League (unit); Wikipedia: Spanish customary units; Wikipedia: Vara (unit)

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