Etymology: < Middle French -metrie < post-classical Latin -metria < ancient Greek -μετρία action or process of measuring < -μετρος measuring ( < μέτρον metre n.1) + -ία -ia suffix1.The earliest words of this kind, geometry n. and planimetry n., entered Middle English from Middle French, but in general French seems to have had less influence than on words in -meter comb. form2. The few words of this kind that first appear in the 16th cent. are mostly rare coinages (based on Greek elements) in John Dee's Preface to Henry Billingsley's translation of Euclid (1570) (e.g. apomecometry n., embadometry n., horometry n., hypsometry n., mecometry n., platometry n., and stratarithmetry n.); the most important of these terms is stereometry n. Apart from the latter, geometry n., and stichometry n., few English words of this type reflect actual ancient Greek words. From the 17th cent. onwards formations containing initial combining forms of Greek origin begin to appear; several 17th-cent. formations are paralleled by post-classical Latin words in -metria (e.g. cyclometry n., pantometry n.), one of the most significant being trigonometry n. In the 18th cent. formations paralleling words in -meter comb. form2 begin to appear; some of the earliest examples reflect earlier French formations (e.g. aerometry n., hydrometry n.). From the 19th century appear formations in which the initial element is a Latin or a modern word (e.g. alkalimetry n., calorimetry n., radiometry n.). Many nouns in -meter comb. form2 have correlative words in -metry, denoting specifically the process of measuring by the instrument called ‘—meter’.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2019).
comb. form