Arbitrary Units of Measurement

Height

Double-decker buses

Length

Football Pitches

Depth

Empire State Buildings

(or more recently, Shards)

Area

Tennis Courts (small)

Waleses or Belgiums (large)

Mass

Elephants

(The height of which are often compared to double-decker buses)

Volume (large)

Olympic swimming Pools

(NOT normal-sized swimming pools. That would be confusing.)

Volume (small)

(especially Toothpaste or Epoxy Filler)

Pea size

Golfball size

Word Count

Novels – usually War and Peace

(Particularly used for explaining the length of government reports)

Length of Document

The Magna Carta

The Gettysburg Address

Distance (short)

Household objects

Distance (medium)

Laps of the M25

Distance (long)

The Moon and back

Circumference of the earth

Orbits of the International Space Station

Thickness (small)

Human Hair

(Is there one for large thickness? Tree trunks? Lampposts?)

Sound

Pneumatic Drill

Jumbo Jet

Salaries

Nurses or footballers (depending on what point you’re trying to make)

Controversial wealth, tax payments, or spending

Hospitals

(e.g. Amazon’s missed tax payments would build 100 hospitals)

White Elephants

£Hundreds – Duck Houses

£Thousands – No.10 Refurbs

£Millions – Millennium Domes

£Billions – High-Speed Railways

Buying Power

Big Macs

Population

Coventries

Birminghams

Internet Speed

Movies per second

Car Speed

Horse Power.

(Because we all know what ninety 90 horses somehow merging into one massive powerful horse would be like)

Food Calorie intake

Bic Macs

Drink Calorie intake

Teaspoons of Sugar

Jumping

Body height

(e.g. a flea can jump 80 times it’s own height)

Baby Size

Types of fruit

Animal Intelligence

Human age

(e.g. A parrot is as smart as a three-year-old human)

Animal Brains

(Specifically types of nut, and specifically dinosaur brains)

Food

Subscriptions

(e.g. You can get this for the price of one cup of coffee per day )

Cups of Coffee

Rainfall

A normal month’s worth

Drunkenness

The legal limit

CO2 Emissions Reduction

Cars off the road

Power Generation

Homes

e.g. ‘the new wind farm could power 20,000 homes’

Figurative Phrases

Speed – as a speeding bullet

Heat – as hot as the sun

Happiness – happy as larry

Sickness – sick as a parrot

Drunkenness – as a skunk

Sobriety – as sober as a judge

Cunningness – as cunning as a fox

The ultimate measures

As fuck

Shitload