| 释义 |
-meter
in actual use commonly -ˈometer, and in some later formations -ˈimeter, a terminal element in words denoting scientific instruments for automatically measuring something. Many words with this ending, as barometer, hydrometer, hygrometer, thermometer, were formed in the 17th c., and represent mod.L. forms in -metrum (F. -mètre, It. -metro). In these early examples the ending is always appended to Gr. noun-stems, or combining forms in -o, and the mod.L. form shows that it was intended to represent the Gr. µέτρον measure (see metre n.1); the formation is irregular, as the Gr. word does not occur in combination with ns., and would not correctly express the required notion of ‘instrument that measures’. In the 18th and 19th c. many additional words were formed with this ending on Greek bases, as actinometer, anemometer, chronometer, eudiometer, etc. Near the end of the 18th c. hybrid formations began to be introduced (many of them first occurring in Fr.). In some of these the form of Greek compounds is imitated, as in gasometer, galvanometer, alcoholometer, lactometer, pedometer; in others the combining-vowel i of the Latin first element is retained, as in calorimeter, gravimeter, densimeter, velocimeter. In some late formations -meter is appended to modern words without any attempt to assimilate the form of the first element to that of a Gr. or Latin combining form, as in voltameter, ammeter. Cf. also the names of electrical measuring instruments mentioned under meter n.3 1 b, which might perhaps be more correctly viewed as examples of the suffixed -meter than as examples of the n. with defining word.
Jocular nonce-words in -ometer have been frequently formed; chiefly in imitation of Sydney Smith's foolometer, with the sense ‘a means of measuring or ascertaining the opinion or prevalent character of some class of people’; also occasionally in names of imaginary instruments for measuring the amount or degree of something, as in obscenometer. Similar hybrid formations have sometimes been adopted as trade names for certain instruments, e.g. comptometer [F. compte account], a kind of calculating machine, distance-ometer.
1828Athenæum 16 Jan. 44/1 We shall be obliged by an account, for our Scientific Report, of the obscenometer by which the ‘Stock Board’ of the Company are enabled so curiously to apportion the measures of indecency. 1859Sat. Rev. VII. 141/2 The member for Birmingham has supplied Parliament with an admirable democratometer, without which it might have been hurried into violent and uncalled-for changes, through a total misapprehension of the real state of public feeling. 1864Daily Tel. 29 Oct., Archdeacon Denison..may be..taken as a kind of clericometer for what is most violent and least sensible in the ecclesiastical world. 1883Eng. Mech. 6 Apr. p. vii, The New Distanceometer. 1894Times 19 Mar. 13/5 The comptometer..is a machine specially adapted for subtraction, multiplication and division. |