Measurement

El calibre pie de rey is the vernier caliper, and the name is a small history lesson. El pie de rey was a king's foot, a length taken from a royal body long before anybody thought of a metre. English named the same tool after Pierre Vernier, who devised its scale, so one language remembers the old unit and the other the inventor. And el calibre on its own is far wider than any tool: it is the bore of a gun, the grade of an egg or an olive, and, of a person, their standing — un profesional de mucho calibre.