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Yes, people still sometimes use the Morgen (=morning). It's the area "tillable in the morning hours of a day by one man behind an ox or horse dragging a single
by FabHK 6y ago
Yes, people still sometimes use the Morgen (=morning).
It's the area "tillable in the morning hours of a day by one man behind an ox or horse dragging a single bladed plough" (about 2500 m^2, though regional variations were 4000 or even up to 10000 m^2).
Interestingly, the acre was also historically determined as the area that can be ploughed in one whole day by a team of eight oxen, namely 1 furlong x 1 chain or 4047 m^2.
Not sure what that says about German vs Anglo-Saxon working hours or oxen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgen
- majewsky 6y agoFWIW, I've never heard the word "Morgen" used in that meaning outside of poems. Maybe this is a regional thing? I'm in East Germany (born and raised in Mecklenburg, now living in Saxony).
- mgerullis 6y agoNever heard it either, born and raised in Stuttgart, living in Berlin
- groby_b 6y agofwiw, heard it used regularly (NRW, "Bergisches Land") - in the late 70s, by people 70+.
- FabHK 6y agoI (GGP) have also heard it in NRW/Rheinland-Pfalz (Eifel) e.g. from older relatives. It is obsolete, and used less than the Zentner, Pfund.
- zwaps 6y agoheard it used in NRW where the size of a plot of land to be sold was still specified in Morgen
- spongeb00b 6y ago> Hide Park is a park in Ankh-Morpork with a small lake. Its unusual name comes from old times, when a hide was the measure of land a man with a bullock could plough on a wet Thursday I should have known Terry Pratchett had based this on some kind of real-world equivalent https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Hide_Park https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Hide_Park