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How Long is “A Country Mile”?
5 days ago
What’s the origin of the phrase a country mile? Vida from Rochester, New York, says her husband often uses it, as in “go about a country mile and then make a left.” The expression goes back at least 300 years in the United Kingdom and has long meant “an approximate distance.” Bumpy, unpaved, curvy roads out in the countryside may make a real mile feel much longer. Variants include Irish mile, Welsh mile, Scots mile, and Kentish mile. The idiom often turns up in baseball, where announcers exaggerate the distance by saying a ball was hit a country mile or a pitch missed by a country mile. The word mile itself comes from Latin for “one thousand,” suggesting the measure of “a thousand paces.” This is part of a complete episode.
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