metre

Pluralmetres

Formsmetres, metring, metred

1. 1
   length unitnouncountable

   The SI base unit of length: the distance light covers in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, roughly 39.37 inches.

   The garden wall stands just over a metre high.

   Drivers must not park within ten metres of a junction.

   UsageThe unit is a metre; a device that measures is a meter: a gas meter, a parking meter. American English writes meter for both.

   Note

   It was still new at the end of the eighteenth century. Its multiples and fractions all take the same prefixes: millimetre, centimetre, kilometre, and the tiny nanometre.

2. 2
   rhythmnouncountable or uncountable

   The measured pattern of rhythm in language, chiefly in verse, and also in music.

   The sonnet is written in a strict metre throughout.

   The piece keeps switching metres, which makes it hard to dance to.

   UsageA poem is written in a metre, and a line keeps or breaks it. American English spells it meter.

   Similarrhythm, measure

   Note

   The same Greek métron reached English twice: this rhythmic sense came early, from Latin metrum through Old English and Old French, long before the unit of length arrived from French.

3. 3
   put in rhythmverbtransitive

   To give words or music a metrical form, arranging them in a regular rhythm.

   Translators who metre the psalms must keep both the sense and the rhythm.

   He metred the old folk tale into rhyming couplets.

   Note

   A verb of poets and composers that is met most often in its past participle, used as an adjective. Metred verse has a regular beat and stands against free verse, which follows no fixed metrical plan; a metred line keeps the pattern, and a writer may say a passage was carefully metred.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3