Answer how long is a piece of string

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Ngram indicates that the phrase is relatively recent, at least as recent as the 19th century.

Lawrence Daily Journal 01 Sep paywall The growth in popularity in the early 's, indicated by the spike around on the Ngram graph, could be a result of a rather prominent and widely reported use of the phrase by US Secretary of War Lindley Garrison in The Burlington Free Press 10 Nov paywall.

Improve this answer. It is not that it cannot be measured. It is that a piece of string can be arbitrarily long. Dr Xorile Dr Xorile 2 2 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges.

A useful comment, to clarify the meaning, but doesn't answer the question of the origin. Drew: I disagree. The OP writes: "what is the origin of this phrase? So I think by "origin" by the OP means exactly what this answer answers: not when it was first used, but why.

And even if you disagree, you can hardly pretend that the OP isn't at least also asking for the explanation in this answer. So I think this is, at the very very least, an excellent partial answer.

In your language, do you have a similar question to How long is a piece of string? Are there any other rhetorical questions that you often ask? Which questions do you dread being asked?

When did you last go on a day trip? Where did you go? Can you think of a time when a plan of yours has backfired? What happened? Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Name required. Mail will not be published required. Chunk of the day: having some work done. Word of the day: whitewash. How long is a piece of string? A piece of string is twice the length of that part between the center and either end!

Answer this one — How far can a dog run into the woods? A dog can run only half way into the woods, after that he is running out of the woods! Any more? For example, the following is from the column The Other Fellow , by Ad Schuster, published in the Oakland Tribune Oakland, California of Thursday 21 st March In the Farm Credit Administration applicants lined up for jobs and were given tests of a kind which some find so delightful.

Like this: Like Loading This doesn't seem to make sense to me. A piece of string is only as long as you choose it to be before I know we can never answer "how long is a piece of string? I've just cleared out a drawer in the garage and found 19 different sized pieces of string. Only one of them is Man in pub said it, so it must be true. Is it just me? Please reply People usually say that when they dont no the answer to the question you just asked them