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The cubit is an ancient unit of length that may have originated in Egypt close to 5,000 years ago. Cubit can refer to various units used in the ancient world, the actual length of which varied from time to time and place to place, but which was generally equivalent to the length of the human arm from elbow to fingertip—roughly about a foot and a half. (Appropriately, the word's source is a Latin word meaning "elbow.") Starting with the Wycliffe Bible in 1382, cubit has been used as the English translation for the measurement known in Biblical Hebrew as the "ammah" and in Koine as the "péchus."
Examples of cubit in a Sentence
Kif Leswing, CNBC, 25 Mar. 2025
And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life?
—Mary Shannon Wells, Southern Living, 29 Jan. 2024
That’s three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high, or five hundred and ten feet by eighty-five by fifty-one.
—Oliver Whang, The New Yorker, 27 Nov. 2023
The cubit mentioned in the Torah with respect to building the ark was longer than what the Torah would later consider to be the length of a cubit.
—Rabbi Avi Weiss, sun-sentinel.com, 4 Oct. 2021
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Cite this Entry
“Cubit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cubit. Accessed 23 Jul. 2025.
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cubit
noun
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