millimetremillimetern.
/ˈmɪlᵻˌmiːtə/, U.S. /ˈmɪləˌmidər/ One-thousandth of a metre, equal to 0.03937 inch. Symbol mm.Also in weakened or figurative use: a tiny amount, a little bit.
ΘΚΠ
the world > relative properties > measurement > measurement of length > [noun] > units of length or distance > metre > the thousandth part of a metre
millimetre1797
millim1862
mill1877
1797 Jrnl. Nat. Philos. Aug. 196 The millimetre is five points and a third.
1807 Med. & Physical Jrnl. 17 418 An incision..about the length of six millemeters (three lines).
1867 R. S. Culley Handbk. Pract. Telegr. (ed. 2) ii. 30 ‘Siemens' Unit’ is one metre of pure mercury, of one square millimetre section, at a temperature of 32°.
1887 H. M. Ward tr. J. von Sachs Lect. Physiol. Plants 47 A lamella..a few tenths of a millimeter thick.
1918 Sat. Evening Post 31 Aug. 34 A fifty-millimeter gun which they dubbed Quick Dick played on them with direct fire.
1933 A. W. Barton Text Bk. Heat xiv. 325 His apparatus consists of three copper discs..each about 4 cm. in diameter and 1 or 2 millimetres thick.
1976 C. Cussler Raise Titanic! (1977) iii. xxiv. 124 The movement of the stylus on the magnetometer's graph was so slight, barely a tiny millimeter of a squibble.
1986 D. Potter Singing Detective vi. 218 A teeny bit, yes. A teensy weensy millimetre or so nearer the garbage heap.
1991 J. Varley Steel Beach (1993) 155 He made a weird sort of smirk, acknowledging the gibe but not letting the tinkerbell mask slip a millimeter.
1999 New Straits Times (Malaysia) 19 Oct. 44 Air deflectors on the two cars breached regulations by 10 millimetres.
Compounds
millimetre wave n. Physics and Astronomy a radio wave having a wavelength between 1 and 10 mm (corresponding to a frequency between 30 and 300 GHz); chiefly attributive, designating equipment or techniques which use or measure these waves.
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1955 Sci. News Let. 14 May 314/3 Millimeter waves at present are a laboratory curiosity being studied by scientists to learn about their properties.
1963 G. Troup Masers & Lasers (ed. 2) ix. 160 The development of millimetre and sub-millimetre wave masers.
1976 Astrophysical Jrnl. 203 159 Millimeter-wave observations made toward the NGC 6530-M8 star-forming complex are compared with high-quality optical interference-filter photographs.
1997 Flight Internat. 18 June (Awards Suppl.) 9/2 A millimetre-wave radar.
1999 New Scientist 26 June 22/1 Their new approach is called terahertz pulse imaging (TPI) and relies on terahertz radiation—also known as millimetre waves.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2002; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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