Many people have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humor value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and that are widely known in the Anglophone world for their humor value.

Systems

FFF units

Unit Dimension Definition SI Value furlong length 660 ft 201.168 m firkin mass fortnight time 14 days 1,209,600 s

Most countries use the International System of Units (SI). In contrast, the furlong/firkin/fortnight system of units of measurement draws attention by being extremely old fashioned and off-beat at the same time.

One furlong per fortnight is very nearly 1 centimetre per minute (to within 1 part in 400). Besides having the meaning of "any obscure unit", furlongs per fortnight have also served frequently in the classroom as an example on how to reduce a unit's fraction. The speed of light may be expressed as being roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight (or megafurlongs per microfortnight).

Potrzebie

In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the "Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures" developed by 19-year-old Donald E. Knuth, later a famed computer scientist. According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or  mm.Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Fun & Games, Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2011, chapter 1: The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures, pages 1--8. The chapter is a reprint of the MAD #33 article . In the addendum, Knuth clarifies that the accidental dropping of the second 4 in the 7th decimal place was a typo by the MAD typesetters.

Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in blintz (equal to the mass of 1 ngogn of halva, which is "a form of pie [with] a specific gravity of 3.1416 and a specific heat of .31416"), and time in seven named units (decimal powers of the average Earth rotation, equal to 1 "clarke"). The system also features such units as whatmeworry (power), cowznofski (time), vreeble (heat energy), hoo, and hah (work).

According to the "Date" system in Knuth's article, which substitutes a 10-clarke "mingo" for a month and a 100-clarke "cowznofski", for a year, the date of October 29, 2007 is rendered as "Cal 7, 201 C. M." (for Cowznofsko Madi, or "in the Cowznofski of our MAD"). The dates are calculated from October 1, 1952, the date MAD was first published. Dates before this point are referred to as "B.M." ("Before MAD.") The ten "Mingoes" are: Tales (Tal.) Calculated (Cal.) To (To) Drive (Dri.) You (You) Humor (Hum.) In (In) A (A) Jugular (Jug.) Vein (Vei.)

Great Underground Empire (Zork) In the Zork series of games, the Great Underground Empire has its own system of measurements, the most frequently referenced of which is the bloit. Defined as the distance the king's favorite pet can run in one hour (spoofing a popular legend about the history of the foot), the length of the bloit varies dramatically, but the one canonical conversion to real-world units puts it at approximately two-thirds of a mile (1 km). Liquid volume is measured in gloops, and temperature in degrees Q (57 °Q is said to be the freezing point of water).Encyclopedia Frobozzica, Infocom, 1993.

Quantity

Sagan

As a humorous tribute to Carl Sagan and his association with the catchphrase "billions and billions", a sagan has been defined as a large quantity – technically at least four billion (two billion plus two billion) – of anything.

Length Attoparsec Parsecs are used in astronomy to measure interstellar distances. A parsec is approximately 3.26 light-years or about 3.086×1016 m (1.917×1013 mi). Combining it with the "atto-" prefix (×10−18) yields attoparsec (apc), a conveniently human-scaled unit of about that is used only humorously.

Beard-second The beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light-year, but applicable to extremely short distances such as those in integrated circuits. It is the length an average beard grows in one second. Kemp Bennett Kolb defines the distance as exactly 100 angstroms (10 nanometres), as does Nordling and Österman's Physics Handbook. Google Calculator uses 5 nm.

Bee's dick An Australian term for a very small distance, as in "he missed crashing into the truck by a bee's dick". It is derived from the small size of a male bee's penis.

Jimmy Griffin Snow Index Television station WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York developed the "Jimmy Griffin Snow Index" to measure the potential severity of a snowstorm. It is named after former Buffalo mayor James D. Griffin, who in 1985 earned the nickname "Six Pack Jimmy" after suggesting residents grab a six-pack of Genesee beer to wait out an upcoming snowstorm. The index is measured in cans of beer, with roughly one can for every of expected snowfall (the index is not perfectly linear at its lower levels as originally introduced); thus, Griffin's six-pack would be recommended for a storm bringing two feet of snow.Parker, Andy (December 5, 2017). Jimmy Griffin Snow Index for the December 5-8, 2017 lake-effect snow event. WKBW-TV official Twitter account. Retrieved December 5, 2017.

Mickey One mickey is the smallest resolvable unit of distance by a given computer mouse pointing device. It is named after Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoon character. Mouse motion is reported in horizontal and vertical mickeys. Device sensitivity is usually specified in mickeys per inch. Typical resolution is 500 mickeys per inch (16 mickeys per mm), but resolutions up to 16,000 mickeys per inch (600 mickeys per mm) are available.

Unrelated, a mickey is Canadian slang for a 375 mililitre bottle of spirits.

Muggeseggele

A Muggeseggele is a humorous Alemannic German idiom used in Swabia to designate a nonspecific very small length or amount of something; it refers to a housefly's scrotum.

Sheppey A measure of distance equal to about , defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque. The Sheppey is the creation of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, included in The Meaning of Liff, their dictionary of putative meanings for words that are actually just place names. It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.

Smoot

The smoot is a unit of length, defined as the height in 1958 of Oliver R. Smoot, who later became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and then the president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The unit is used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. Canonically, and originally, in 1958 when Smoot was a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge at MIT (class of 1962), the bridge was measured to be 364.4 smoots, plus or minus one ear, using Mr. Smoot himself as a ruler. At the time, Smoot was 5 feet, 7 inches, or 170 cm, tall. Google Earth and Google Calculator include the smoot as a unit of measurement.

The Cambridge (Massachusetts) police department adopted the convention of using smoots to measure the locations of accidents and incidents on the bridge. When the original markings were removed or covered over during bridge maintenance, the police had to request that someone reapply the smoot scale markings. During a major bridge rebuild, the concrete sidewalk was permanently divided into segments one smoot in length, as opposed to the regular division of six feet.

Wiffle A wiffle, also referred to as a WAM for Wiffle (ball) assisted measurement, is equal to a sphere 89 millimetres (3.5 inches) in diameter – the size of a Wiffle ball, a perforated, lightweight plastic ball frequently used by marine biologists as a size reference in photos to measure corals and other objects. The spherical shape makes it omnidirectional and perfect for taking a speedy measurement, and the open design also allows it to avoid being crushed by water pressure. Wiffle balls are a much cheaper alternative to using two reference lasers, which often pass straight through gaps in thin corals.

A scientist on the research vessel is credited with pioneering the technique.

Area

Barn, outhouse, shed A barn is a serious metric unit of area used by nuclear physicists to quantify the scattering or absorption cross-section of very small particles, such as atomic nuclei. One barn is equal to . The name derives from the folk expressions "As big as a barn," and "Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn", used by particle accelerator physicists to refer to the probability of achieving a collision between particles. For nuclear purposes, is actually rather large.Marshall Holloway and Richard Baker (13 March 1944), "Note on the Origin of the Term 'Barn, LAMS-523, cited in Lillian Hoddeson et al., Critical Assembly, p. 430, footnote 51 The outhouse () and shed () are derived by analogy.Whittle, K. (2020). "Evolution of reactor technologies". In Nuclear Materials Science (2nd ed). IOP Publishing.Sherman, T. H. (2012). "Development of an advanced neutron activation analysis protocol at the University of Utah nuclear engineering facility". The University of Utah.

Nanoacre The nanoacre is a unit of real estate on a very-large-scale integration (VLSI) chip equal to or the area of a square of side length . VLSI nanoacres have similar total costs to acres in Silicon Valley.

Volume

Barn-megaparsec This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. When a barn (a very small unit of area used for measuring the cross sectional area of atomic nuclei) is multiplied by a megaparsec (a very large unit of length used for measuring the distances between galaxies), the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to of a teaspoon (about 3 mL). Bruno A Bruno is the volume of the dent left in asphalt pavement after a piano is dropped six stories from the roof of MIT's Baker House. It is named after Charlie Bruno, class of 1974, who discovered that the student handbook at the time did not prohibit dropping objects off of the roof, but only prohibited throwing objects out of dorm windows. The Bruno is measured periodically on MIT's Drop Day, and is approximately one liter.

Hubble-barn Similar to the barn-megaparsec, the Hubble-barn uses the barn with the Hubble length, which is the radius of the visible universe as derived by using the Hubble constant and the speed of light. This amounts to around 13.1 litres (3.46 US gallons, 2.88 Imperial gallons).

Power

Donkey power This facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 wattsabout a third of a horsepower.

Pirate-ninja A pirate-ninja is defined as one kilowatt-hour (3.6 MJ) per Martian day, or sol. It is equivalent to approximately 40.55 watts, and was first used in the 2011 novel The Martian by Andy Weir. Weir said in a 2015 interview that the Curiosity rover team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses the similar unit 'watt-hours per sol' in their meetings, and the team told Weir that they should just call them milli-pirate-ninjas.

Time

Friedman

The Friedman is approximately six months, specifically six months in the future, and named after columnist Thomas Friedman who repeatedly used the span in reference to when a determination of Iraq's future could be surmised.

Jiffy

A jiffy is a unit of time used in computer operating systems, being the interval of time between system timer interrupts. This interval varies from system to system, but is typically between 1 and 10 milliseconds.

Microcentury According to Gian-Carlo Rota, the mathematician John von Neumann used the term microcentury to denote the maximum length of a lecture. One microcentury is 52 minutes and 35.7 secondsone millionth of a century.

Nanocentury