Fortnight
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A fortnight is a unit of time equal to two weeks: that is 14 days, or literally 14 nights. The term is common in the British Isles and many Commonwealth countries, but rarely used in the United States. It derives from the Old English feowertiene niht, meaning "fourteen nights".
[edit] Unusual usages
It can sometimes be used to describe a unit of time equal to five months in some Dickensian literature.[citation needed] In the VMS operating system, some configuration parameters are specified in microfortnights (one millionth of a nignhy, or 1.2096 seconds). Millifortnights (about 20 minutes) and nanofortnights (1.2096 milliseconds) have also been used occasionally in computer science, usually in an attempt to be deliberately over-complex and obscure. The aim is generally to slow users down, allowing them to set parameters only after some thought.
One attoparsec per microfortnight is approximately 1.00432766 inches per second.
The speed unit of one furlong per fortnight is a barely noticeable 0.166 millimetres per second, or roughly 1 centimetre per minute.
