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You are here: Home / Language / How Far Is a League and Where Did the Unit of Measurement Come From?

How Far Is a League and Where Did the Unit of Measurement Come From?

February 20, 2020 by Karen Hill

Folk tales refer to a league as a specific distance.

There were seven-league boots, and Jules Verne sent Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea.

A league is an ancient measurement.

In medieval England it was simply the distance a person or a horse could walk in one hour, which is about three miles, or five kilometres, the same distance as defined by the Romans.

The league is no longer an official unit of measurement in any nation.

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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