engineer's chain
- noun
- Archaic
:
cadena de ingeniero
- Surveyors used an engineer's chain to establish property boundaries in the 19th century.
Examples
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The surveyor measured the distance with an engineer's chain.
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This old map uses engineer's chain as its unit of measurement.
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The distance between the two markers was measured as one engineer's chain.
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Did you see the engineer's chain used in the project?
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Surveyors used an engineer's chain to measure distances accurately during construction projects.
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The length of the property was determined to be two engineer's chains according to the survey.
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In the past, maps often referenced distances in engineer's chains for land surveying.
Surface Forms
Morphology
engineer's + chain
The possessive construction 'engineer's' + 'chain' is compositional, so a B1 learner who knows 'engineer' and 'chain' can plausibly infer this refers to a chain associated with engineers (likely a tool or surveying measure). However, the precise conventional meaning — a historical unit equal to 100 feet — and its specific numeric value are specialized and not predictable from the constituents alone, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Engineer's chain comes from a real tool: an engineer's metal chain used by people who measured land that was about '100 feet' long. That's why the chain's length became the name for the measure, and today engineer's chain means 'a unit of length'.
