Number & MeasureGreek → English
Metric
/ˈmɛtrɪk/noun
A standard of measurement, or the decimal system of units.
The Greek roots
μέτρον
métron
measure
Literally: “having to do with measure”
Follow a root:μέτρον47 words
The story of the word
Μετρικός meant relating to measure, and in English metric first belonged to poetry: metrical feet, the measure of a line. The unit sense came from French métrique after the revolutionary metric system of the 1790s, built on the metre. The business use, a metric to track, is twentieth century and now the commonest of the three, so the same word covers a hexameter, a kilogram and a dashboard number.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
metregeometrythermometersymmetry
In a sentence
Pick a metric you can actually measure weekly.