18:31, giovedì 17 luglio 2008, Molly Mockford:
> At 02:20:07 on Thu, 17 Jul 2008, ct
>
>>According to every dictionary I have been able to find, the
>>proper British spelling of "metre" ends in -re, whereas the
>>proper British spelling of "perimeter" ends in -er.
>>
>>Is there any reasonable explanation for this inconsistency?
>
> There are two entirely different words here. "Metre", with an
> -re, refers to a specific distance (100cm), which is
> officially defined as
> follows: "The metre is the length of the path travelled by
> light in
> vacuum during a time interval of 1?299,792,458 of a second".
> From this word come variants, such as kilometre for 1000
> metres, centimeter for a
> hundredth of a metre, etc. (In American English, although
> they do not tend to use metric measurements, they do tend to
> mis-spell the word as "meter".)
This word was created in the late Eighteenth century.
From the greek "metron" measure.
> "Meter", with an -er, refers to a measuring device, or to a
> measurement
> which is *not* confined to one specific distance (as with
> metre). A perimeter is the measured distance around the
> outside of something; a gasometer is the large container which
> holds (and measures) domestic gas
> supplies; a tachometer is the device in a lorry driver's cab
> which
> keeps track of his hours and mileage; a parking meter shows
> how much
> time you have bought to leave your car there; and your
> electricity
> meter shows how much power you have used. There are many,
> many such
> words and phrases; you might find it amusing to see how many
> you can collect!
These words, at least the oldest of them, were created centuries
before "metre", so they changed the spelling in a way more
close to its English pronunciation.
In French and other languages they end with -metre, or similar,
in German and in Slovenian they end like in English: -meter.
(Italian -metro)
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