Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States and the Philippines, which use meter. Other West Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch, and

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The etymological roots of metre can be traced to the Greek verb μετρέω (metreo) (to measure, count or compare) and noun μέτρον (metron) (a measure), which were used for physical measurement, for poetic metre and by extension for moderation or avoiding extremism (as in

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Pendulum or meridian
In 1671 Jean Picard measured the length of a "seconds pendulum" and proposed a unit of measurement twice that length to be called the universal toise (French: Toise universelle). In 1675, Tito Livio Burattinisuggested the term metre

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In France, the metre was adopted as an exclusive measure in 1801 under the Consulate. This continued under the First French Empire until 1812, when Napoleon decreed the introduction of the non-decimal mesures usuelles, which remained in use in France up to

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Within this table, "inch" and "yard" mean "international inch" and "international yard" respectively, though approximate conversions in the left column hold for both international and

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• Conversion of units for comparisons with other units
• International System of Units
• Introduction to the metric system

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SI prefixes can be used to denote decimal multiples and submultiples of the metre, as shown in the table below. Long distances are usually expressed in km, astronomical units(149.6

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