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metre

nounverbnounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈmiːtə//
  • United States//ˈmiːtəɹ//
  • United States/[ˈmiːɾɚ]/

The basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International d'Unités), equal to the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 seconds. The metre is equal to 39+⁴⁷⁄₁₂₇ (approximately 39.37) imperial inches.

noun

  1. 1

    The basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International d'Unités), equal to the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 seconds. The metre is equal to 39+⁴⁷⁄₁₂₇ (approximately 39.37) imperial inches.

    Holonyms: kilometre < megametre < gigametre < terametre < petametre

    Meronyms: picometre < nanometre < micrometre < millimetre < centimetre < decimetre

    The measures of length above the metre are ten times ... greater than the metre.

    A dress length of 8 metres of the best quality costs 58 francs.

Etymology

From French mètre, from Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron, “measure, rule, length, size, poetic metre”). Doublet of meter, metron, and mether.

verb

  1. 1

    Variant of meterrareAlternative spelling of meter.

noun

  1. 1

    Rhythm or measure. The rhythm or measure in language (especially verse).

  2. 2

    Rhythm or measure. The rhythm or measure in musical composition.

Etymology

From Old English, from Latin metrum, from Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron, “measure, rule, length, size, poetic metre”).

verb

  1. 1

    To put into metrical form.

Forms

plural
metres
past tense
metred
past participle
metred
present participle
metring
third person singular
metres
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).