Meaning & use
meter
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Meanings
nouncountable
The basic unit of length in the metric system, equal to about 3.28 feet.
Grammar: Countable; use a number before it: two meters.
Patterns
- a meter long
- square meters
- cubic meters
The room is about four meters wide.
He ran the 100-meter race in under 11 seconds.
The pool is 25 meters long.
nouncountable
A device that measures and records the amount of something used, such as gas, water, electricity, or time.
Grammar: Countable; often used with 'read' or 'check': read the meter.
Patterns
- read the meter
- check the meter
- a parking meter
The electricity meter is in the basement.
I need to put more coins in the parking meter.
The gas meter showed we had used less this month.
noununcountableliterarytechnical
The regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
Grammar: Uncountable; used in literary study.
Patterns
- the meter of a poem
- in meter
The poem's meter gives it a steady rhythm.
He wrote the lines in strict meter.
Word forms
| plural | meters |
|---|
Common combinations
- parking meter
- She fed the parking meter before going into the shop.
- electricity meter
- The electricity meter is read every month.
- square meter
- The apartment is 80 square meters.
- meter reading
- The meter reading was higher than expected.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
Commonly confused: meter or metre?
meter vs metre
British spelling for the unit of length; in American English, 'meter' is used for both the unit and the device.
Practice
The car is about five _____ long.
Choose one answer.
After a number and before 'long', we use the plural countable noun 'meters'; 'meter' is singular and would need 'a' or 'one', while 'metered' and 'metering' are verb forms.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “meter”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.