United States Customary System
- noun
- /juˈnaɪtɪd steɪts ˈkʌstəmɛri ˈsɪstəm/
- Specialized
:
Sistema de Medidas de los Estados Unidos
- The United States Customary System uses feet and inches instead of meters and centimeters for length.
Examples
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American recipes often give ingredient quantities using the United States Customary System.
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Many tools sold in the US are marked with both metric and United States Customary System measurements.
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The United States Customary System includes units like the foot and pound.
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Many people are familiar with the United States Customary System of measurement.
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American recipes often give ingredient quantities using the United States Customary System.
-
Many tools sold in the US are marked with both metric and United States Customary System measurements.
-
The United States Customary System uses feet and inches instead of meters and centimeters for length.
Synonyms
A system of measurement using units like the foot, pound, and pint that is used mainly in the United States
How Official
- Specialized
1
3.8
- Specialized
- Formal
175
2.8
- Informal
31
3.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
united + state + customary + system
The phrase is compositional: 'United States' specifies the country, 'customary' means traditional or commonly used, and 'system' denotes a formal set of units or rules, so a learner who knows those words can infer it refers to the measurement system used in the United States. This follows a straightforward, cross-linguistic pattern (‘‘X customary system’’ = the system customary to X), making the meaning directly derivable from the constituents for a B1 learner.
Etymology
United States Customary System comes from the measuring ways brought by British settlers long ago; when the United States became a country people kept using those older units like feet, pounds, and pints. That's why today the name means the set of 'measurements' still used in the US instead of the metric system.