litre
Plurallitres
US spellingliter
- 1A metric unit of volume, used especially for liquids, equal to one cubic decimetre, or an amount of that size (symbol L, l or ℓ).
Stir in half a litre of vegetable stock and leave it to simmer for twenty minutes.
During the drought, each household was asked to keep several litres of drinking water in reserve.
UsageSay a litre of water and half a litre; the symbol L is often preferred to l, which looks like 1.
Note
The unit arrived from French with its French spelling, which British English keeps; American English writes liter.
Less common meaning
- 2A Chilean tree or shrub, Lithraea caustica.
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Origin
English took litre from French. The French word goes back through Medieval Latin litra to Ancient Greek λίτρα (lítra), the name of a Sicilian coin and of a measure of weight. Latin lībra is related, and libra, lira, livre and litra share the same source.