swordlengthEtymologyFrom sword + length. Compare Middle English swerde-length, swerd lengthe.nounA distance equal to the length of a sword.“All danger of that, however—which (though of course I should have done it unhesitatingly,) would have been not a little disagreeable in a country where respectability is measured by swordlengths just as silk is by yardlengths—is entirely over.”