A verst (;
Plurals and variants
In the
English language,
verst is singular with the normal plural
versts. In Russian, the
nominative singular is versta, but the form usually used with numbers is the
genitive plural verst—10 verst, 25 verst, etc.—whence the English form.
A mezhevaya versta (, literally "border verst") is twice as long as a verst.
The verst of the 17th century was 700 or 1.49 km as against the 500 sazhens or 1.067 km it became at the time of Peter the Great.[, citing Dal's Tolkovyy Slovar.]
Finnish virsta
In
Finland, a virsta was 1,068.84 m according to the Swedish standard, defined in 1827 as of a peninkulma, the Finnish language name for the pre-metric Swedish
mil, used in Finland since the early 17th century (see Obsolete Finnish units of measurement), or 600 syli (Swedish fathoms, 1.781 m). Metrication replaced virsta with the
kilometre in the 1880s.
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