Fathom Britain, it can mean the quantity of wood in a pile of any length measuring square in cross section. In Hungary the square fathom ("") is still in use as an unofficial measure of land area, primarily for small lots suitable for construction. Fathom A fathom is a unit of length in the imperial and the U.S. customary systems equal to , used especially for measuring the depth of water. There are two yards (6 feet) in an imperial fathom. Originally the span of a man's outstretched arms, the size of a fathom has varied slightly depending on whether it
Fathom (trademark). The record made by such a device is a fathogram. A fathom line or fathom curve, a usually sinuous line on a nautical chart, joins all points having the same depth of water, thereby indicating the contour of the ocean floor. The components of a commercial fisherman's setline were measured in fathoms. The rope called a "groundline", used to form the main line of a setline, was usually provided in bundles of 300 fathoms. A single 50-fathom skein () of this rope was referred to as a "line". Especially in Pacific coast fisheries the setline was composed of units