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Meter is a metric measurement slightly longer than a yard; thus, a 100-meter dash might take you a second longer than a 100-yard dash. But the word has a different sense in music, where people aren't separated by whether they use the metric system. For a musician, the meter is the regular background rhythm, expressed by the "time signature" written at the beginning of a piece or section: 2/2, 2/4, 3/8, 4/4, 6/8, etc. Within a meter, you can create rhythms that range from the simple to the complex. So, for example, "America the Beautiful" is in 4/4 meter (or "4/4 time"), but so are most of the rhythmically complex songs written by Paul Simon, Burt Bacharach, or Stevie Wonder. In ordinary conversation, though, most people use "rhythm" to include meter and everything that's built on top of it. In poetry, meter has much the same meaning; however, poetic meters aren't named with numbers but instead with traditional Greek and Latin terms such as iambic and dactylic.
Examples of meter in a Sentence
Elie Dolgin, IEEE Spectrum, 4 June 2026
The next cheapest option is metered parking.
—Ella Gonzales
june 2, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 2 June 2026
Welcome to the era of token economics, where AI consumption is metered in fractions of a cent, scales unpredictably and shows up on the P&L without ever passing through procurement.
—Anand Murugan, Forbes.com, 27 May 2026
The entire rhythm of the enterprise was metered by how fast people could think, read and decide.
—MSNBC Newsweek, 30 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for meter
Cite this Entry
“Meter.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meter. Accessed 10 Jun. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
meter
1 of 3 noun
meter
2 of 3 nounmeter
3 of 3 nounMedical Definition
meter
1 of 2 nounmeter
2 of 2 noun
