The
hand is a non-
SI unit of measurement of
length standardized to . It is used to measure the height of horses in some English-speaking countries, including
Australia,
Canada, the
Republic of Ireland, the
United Kingdom and the
United States. With origins in
ancient Egypt, it was originally based on the breadth of a
human hand. The adoption of the international inch in 1959 allowed for a standardized imperial form and a metric conversion. It may be abbreviated to "h" or "hh". Although measurements between whole hands are usually expressed in what appears to be decimal format, the subdivision of the hand is not decimal but is in
base 4, so subdivisions after the
radix point are in quarters of a hand, which are inches. Thus, 62 inches is fifteen and a half hands, or 15.2 hh (normally said as "fifteen-two", or occasionally in full as "fifteen hands two inches")