cubic gallons

[Laurence Horn]

>On Sep 24, 2005, at 12:21 PM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
>>At 5:40 PM -0500 9/23/05, Mullins, Bill wrote:
>>>
>>>... Here's some actual knowledge.  "Cubic gallons" is ignorance on
>>>the part
>>>of the user.  "Cubic" is used when describing volume to modify a
>>>linear
>>>measure -- cubic meters, cubic yards, cubic inches, etc.  "Gallon"
>>>is a
>>>measure of volume already, so adding "cubic" to it only confuses the
>>>matter.
>>>
>>It wouldn't be the only one.  Googling "cubic gallons" turns up 501
>>hits, but "square acres" yields 30,300.  The vacuous measure is here
>>to stay.
>
>as i pointed out some time ago in this thread, "square acre" is not a
>pleonasm; it refers to something that is both an acre (in area) and a
>square (in shape) -- an acre that's square.

Sorry, I missed that.  But the vast majority of the 30,300 hits for
the plural (there are also 13,800 for the singular) don't, at a
glance, imply anything about shape.  They seem to basically refer to
acres, as far as I can tell.

L

>  now, "cubic gallon" is
>much more problematic...
>
>arnold