Measure for measure

We have the inch, the yard, the mile, the acre - even the Smoot. But the time is long overdue to add the "sori" ("size of Rhode Island") as an official unit of measurement in the English language. These days the phrase "size of Rhode Island" is generally used to measure global disasters: melting ice caps, meteor impacts, volcanic mudslides, storm systems, forest fires. But anything goes. A food writer once compared a pork chop at a trendy New York City restaurant to the "size of Rhode Island." A gossip columnist once described George Clooney's ego in similar terms. The Web site http://www.quahog.org/ keeps a running tally of "size of Rhode Island" references, the earliest of which counted how many Rhode Islands could fit in the new territory of Alaska (William M. Thayer's "Marvels of the New West," 1887). In 1993, The New York Times called Rhode Island "a key unit of metaphoric measurement." A decade or so later, the online magazine Slate described the Ocean State as "the nation's yardstick." Readers of my weekly column, "Flotsam and Jetsam," know that it is sometimes used as a repository for new "size of Rhode Island" references, a role that will now be taken over by this blog. (We won't be sticklers for a running count, since Quahog is already doing that. Consider it the cyber equivalent of catch-and-release fishing.) The beauty of the "sori" is that it is used indiscriminately to describe two different, approximate sizes: the 1,500 square miles that include Narragansett Bay and the 1,000 square miles that don't. Although jigsaw puzzle-shaped Rhode Island doesn't have the geometric simplicity of, say, Kansas, the state's two versions of "sori" are both easy to equate to larger masses, even for the most math-challenged journalist. The truth is, a complex world seems more manageable when measured in Rhode Islands. So the "sori" is here to stay. Sorry, Delaware.

Have you spotted a "size of Rhode Island" reference recently? Share it, along with the source, with Blog on the Half Shell readers.