PeevePile • A Pet Peeve Archive

Acres

"Since 1970, almost 50 million acres..."
"Surrounded by 4 acres of..."
What the fuck is an acre?? what am I, a farmer? is it bigger than a football field? deeper than a fathom? how many cubits is that?

— Stuart from | Language | 1.22.2009 | Comments (13)

— You speak the truth

640 acres = 1 sq. mile 1 acre = 43,560 sq. feet

— Biffy

Biffy - see what I mean?

— Stuart

Yes, now you can use this handy conversion table to make sense of these strange units that plague your life.

— Biffy

the average suburb home is on 1/4 to 1/2 acre. and it's a very handy word for those of us who actually do live out in the middle of nowhere.

— lc

An acre is a unit of area equal to 4,840 square yards. Do you know what a square yard is? Why would someone with your limited language skills even care what an acre was? I am sure your family would be very proud knowing you posted a question using profanity to show your ignorance.

— catspower

Relax! The guy who posted this is a writer. I like acres, but admit that, for a city person, at least, they're an obscure unit that you still seem to hear about often. It'd be nice to take a moment, and actually feel an acre, walk around it, get to know it.

Logically, I don't think it's any more ridiculous than any other non-metric unit.

— Biffy

My apartment is 1% of an acre.

A football field, however, is almost exactly an acre.

— Biffy

I'm sorry, but could you be more specific? Are you pondering a US acre, a survey acre, a commercial acre or an Irish acre? And by football field, which does indeed have a measurable area, are you referring to a US, Canadian or Australian football field, or are you trying to measure the area of an official FIFA soccer pitch? And before moving from two dimensional areas on to single dimensional length measurements perhaps you should specify whether we are discussing English, Egyptian, or Roman cubits? SI units, anybody?

— Parma John

"Acre" is an Anglo-Saxon word that means, literally, the amount of land that can be plowed in one day. The actual size of an acre was obviously variable. That is, until the reign of Henry VIII who codified the measurement to be 40 poles long by 4 poles wide, or 43,560 square feet.

— Grome

Wow, Grome, Poles must have been really fat in Henry the Eigth's day.

— v jones

"they're an obscure unit that you still seem to hear about often" Does no-one else see the problem with this? :)

— Timothy posted 1/22/2009

Turn the pole the other way, VJ.

— Barlow posted 1/22/2009

Strangers who tell me to smile because "it can't be that bad" or because I'm too pretty not to. » I'm a female with a long face. I *cannot* smile on command. And my normal expression is not a smile either. It's not my fault you feel uncomfortable. – 9/5

Being obnoxiously wide on public transportation. » You never know when someone is actually needs the space. Some people could be suffering from something not visible to the naked eye. Like if someone blocks off the seat next the them, they could be having impending diarrhea cramps and really not want to deal with someone sitting so close next to them. That being said, I KNOW that some people just feel entitled to a huge amount of space and that pisses me off so much, since I am so anal about taking up a fair amount of room. – 9/5

When you are driving and the person in shotgun holds on to the door or the dash or fucking tries to press their foot down on an invisible brake as if I don't know what I'm doing or how fast I'm driving. » It's totally instinctual for me. I wish I could stop. The "holy shit" handle holding is not quite a reflex. I am not passive aggressive about it, I usually tell the person their driving scares me as well. – 9/5

People who deliberately pronounce words incorrectly and repeatedly. » I greatly dislike when people pronounce 'shrimp' as 'scrimps' or 'strawberries' as 'scrawberries'. Come on! I've never heard that before. odd. – 9/5

Escalator as ride. » Yea I have no problem if they just keep to the right. – 9/5

People saying "we got the memo?" (or such) when two or more people are wearing similar outfits or colors. » I'd never heard that before. I think it's cute. – 9/5

02.11.10

Send in your mobile phone pet peeves for the week of February 15th! Perhaps the simplest and most common generator of peeves, the mobile phone prods and pricks us in all places, public and private. With skull phones just around the corner, it’s likely these peeves will soon become irrelevant—so let’s spray them across the galaxy while we still can.

01.18.10

For the next week or so, the pictures for peeves will be of Peeve Pile’s national spokesperson, Rob Grace, and his special person, Shana, enacting various peeves. Please feel free to make such pictures yourself. Just include a link to them when submitting a peeve.

01.02.10

Hello. I’ve added a voting feature, so you can vote as you assume that you would – just click on a one-to-five star rating (it will tell you your vote has been recorded); five indicating that you completely agree with, or find the peeve amusing, one meaning the opposite.

Once a bunch of ratings are in, I’ll add a worst, and best rated area to the right column.