The oblique fathom is an ancient Russian measure of length, which at one time was actively used to carry out a variety of measurements. Today it is no longer relevant in this capacity, but the expression "oblique fathom in the shoulders" is still preserved in the language.
Oblique fathom
Slanting fathom is one of the subspecies of ordinary fathom, which differs from it in the way of measurement. At the same time, the fathom, like many other measures of length used in Ancient Russia, was measured based on the proportions of the body of a particular person, and therefore this measure could not be called completely objective: after all, the length of the fathom usually differed among people of different heights and constitutions.
Thus, an ordinary fathom represented the distance from the fingertips of one hand to the fingertips of the other. At the same time, for such a measurement, it was necessary to stretch the arms parallel to the floor, thereby forming a semblance of the letter "T". The oblique fathom was measured in a slightly different way: it was the distance from the tips of the fingers to the foot of the opposite leg, and in this case the hand should be raised up. Accordingly, any hand was suitable for measuring the length of the oblique fathom: if the right hand was raised up, it was necessary to measure the distance from the tips of its fingers to the left leg, and vice versa. An earlier term that was used to designate this measure of length was "oblique fathom", but later in Russia it was almost everywhere replaced by the expression "oblique fathom", which has come down to our days.
Despite all the subjectivity, in the process of using this measure, some averaged values have been developed that allow it to be widely used for a wide variety of measurements. Converting the length of the standard oblique fathom to the system of measures adopted today shows that it was 2.48 meters.
Oblique fathom in the shoulders
"Oblique fathom in the shoulders" is a stable expression, the origin of which is based precisely on the same oblique fathom that was used in Ancient Russia. The metric value of this indicator itself demonstrates that a person whose shoulder width is about 2.5 meters is quite large. Therefore, it should be stated that the use of this expression was used in order to make it clear to others that the person in question has a truly heroic physique.
At the same time, on average, the shoulder width of, for example, a man with a height of about 180 centimeters is about 40 centimeters. Therefore, we can say that the expression "oblique fathom in the shoulders" is a vivid example of artistic exaggeration, since it can hardly take place in reality.
