Traditionally, the human body was used as the basis for many units of length or distance. One of the most popular measurements that was chosen was the length of a human foot. Almost all civilizations adopted such a unit and used the word in their own language for "foot" as the name of the unit, although, in some cases, a larger multiple was considered the base unit. (Thus, in the English-speaking world, the yard of three feet was the base unit of length. In pre-Revolutionary France, the toise, or fathom, equal to six times the length of the standard foot, was considered the base unit.) While feet of different people vary in length, in every culture a standard was adopted, more or less the same size, approximately 1 ft or 0.3 m in length.