the.com/hectare
a metric box of land sized exactly to confuse Americans on purpose
means A unit of area equal to 10,000 square meters, or about 2.47 acres, used mainly for measuring land.
from Coined in France during the metric system's rollout, by gluing together the Greek-derived prefix 'hecto-' (hundred) and 'are' — itself from the Latin 'area,' meaning a piece of level ground. An 'are' was set at 100 square meters, so a hectare is literally a 'hundred ares.' The 'hecto-' nods to that hundredfold multiplication, and the whole word entered English in the 19th century alongside its metric siblings.
- size
- 10,000 square meters, roughly two football fields
- name origin
- hecto plus are, a vanished unit
- the are
- 100 square meters, hectare's forgotten parent
- farming
- the standard land unit nearly everywhere but America
- acre rival
- about 2.47 acres, metric's tidy comeback
siberian federal district — largest administrative region in russia at 13.1 million hectares
amazon rainforest — approximately 550 million hectares across south america
sahara desert — covers about 900 million hectares across north africa