Has anyone ever heard the saying 'How long is a piece of string'?

Question

How long is string? Surely it depends on the roll you cut it from

Answer 1

YES .... it's a subjective thing.

Answer 2

What's the sound of one hand clapping?

There's hundreds of these type of sayings. And they all equate to the same thing.

'Who knows?'

Somethings are too vague or diverse or incomprehensible to be able to quantify.

How big's the universe?

How long's a piece of string?

Answer 3

That's the whole point.

Its like being asked how much does it cost to buy a house.

It could be anything, but its impossible to answer without more information (ie how many rooms, where it is etc).

Such a vague question which you cannot give an answer too with more info can have the analogy of 'how long is a piece of string'.

Answer 4

thats an old one!

Answer 5

The answer is "twice the distance from the middle to an end"

Answer 6

Well, how long's a piece of wool...? :-)

Answer 7

yeap

basically means sometimes there are no definite answers

Answer 8

Nope, never heard it. Why, is it like, famous or something?

Answer 9

The last time i heard that said to me,  i was in a very inquisitive mood and my friend had had enough of my "silly" questions.  She replied to one of my questions with "How long is a piece of string?"  and immediately i asked another question.  I'm sure you guessed what it was :-)

Answer 10

yeah, I really hate that saying though.  Usually get it instead of a proper answer.

Answer 11

I have, and the main answer I have heard is similar to Alan S's.. It's twice the diameter.

Answer 12

It's meant to signify that the asker has asked a ridiculous question to which there is no definitive answer.

As for your interpretation... that just makes matters worse. If you had a ball of string containing a 1000 miles of string, you could still cut a piece that was 1 inch long.