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Concept
Metre
Summary
The metre (or meter in American spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).
The metre was originally defined in 1791 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately 40000 km. In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar. The actual bar used was changed in 1889. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86.
The current definition was adopted in 1983 and modified slightly in 2002 to clarify that the metre is a measure of proper length. From 1983 until 2019, the metre was formally defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second. After the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units, this definition was rephrased to include the definition of a second in terms of the caesium frequency ΔνCs.
Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations; the exceptions are the United States and the Philippines, which use meter. Other West Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch, and North Germanic languages, such as Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, likewise spell the word Meter or meter.
Measuring devices (such as ammeter, speedometer) are spelled "-meter" in all variants of English. The suffix "-meter" has the same Greek origin as the unit of length.
The etymological roots of metre can be traced to the Greek verb μετρέω (metreo) (to measure, count or compare) and noun μέτρον (metron) (a measure), which were used for physical measurement, for poetic metre and by extension for moderation or avoiding extremism (as in "be measured in your response"). This range of uses is also found in Latin (metior, mensura), French (mètre, mesure), English and other languages. The Greek word is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *meh1- 'to measure'.
Official source
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