My pronunciations are pretty arbitrary I guess.
mul-TIM-it-er
al-TIM-it-er
Kih-LOM-it-er
KILL-o-gram
KEE-lo
Fortunately I use pounds and miles, so the last three are irrelevant.
multImeter
John:What is that?
Joey P: It’s a multimeter.
John: um, what’s it for?
Joey P: What does it sound like, it meters multis.
I crack myself up…and I get to use that one a lot.
Where I used to work, everybody wore a dosimeter to measure how radiologically zapped we were getting.
It was always pronounced do-SIM-meter.
ETA: And according to a nearby thread, neither spee-DOM-meter nor SPEED-o-meter is correct. Sat-nav is correct.
So do pregnant women dilate in centimeters or sonometers? :rolleyes:
At birthing class, I’m pretty sure I was the only person IN THE WHOLE HOSPITAL BUILDING that knew what a sonometer really was. :smack:
Mul-TIM-it-er, having never formally been introduced to the concept but using it now and again. But I did make note of the odd affectation a while ago, and started sometimes saying THERM-o-meet-er for thermometer in non-silent protest and mockery of my airs. Also to confuse people.
40 years working in and around electronic communications, and with others that do it for a living, and all I’ve ever said and heard is Mul-tee-mee-ter.
Well, that’s why I mentioned “communities of practice.” I’ve always been around electronics people, too, and I’ve always said it the way you do. But Johnny is an aviator, and that might have something to do with it. For whatever reason, all Americans stress the second syllable of alti- in the word altimeter. But aviators use the word more than anyone else, so that could by why he also does the same with multimeter–that is, he stresses the second syllable of multi-, rather than the first, as we do.
This.
The Fluke 87, in addition to measuring volts, also measures resistance and current. It meters multiple things.
True. But for whatever reason, most people refer to handheld meters as DVMs, not DMMs.
Because based on the Youtube video describing the pronunciation of ‘multimeter’, and my own experience with Brits pronouncing ‘altimeter’, I pronounce neither one the way Brits do – as explained in the OP.
Possibly, but I’ve never heard it called that. Even the fluke site says DMM.
We can settle on any standard, but by gosh it oughta be consistent, not a hodgepodge.
ISTM in the spirit of fighting ignorance, and ignorant practice, we GQ folk should all resolve henceforth to always pronounce all <whatever>-meter or <whatever>-ometer words as if hyphenated as I wrote. So the last part is always and forever MEE-ter or oh-MEE-ter and the first part, no matter the length or vowel or consonant ending is pronounced as a free-standing word with a little less emphasis than the (oh-)MEE-ter part.
e.g.:
Speed-oh-MEE-ter
Oh-doh-MEE-ter
Al-tih-MEE-ter
Mul-tih-MEE-ter
Volt-MEE-ter
Amm-MEE-ter
Ohm-MEE-ter
Bear-oh-MEE-ter
Therm-oh-MEE-ter
And of course the units of length are:
Mill-ih-MEE-ter
Cent-ih-MEE-ter
Kill-oh-MEE-ter
And the “gram” is not silent in
Kill-oh-GRAM
Who’s with me on this new (and utterly pointless :)) crusade?
Ah–I’m sorry, I get it now. I thought that Youtube video was facetiously meant to “correct” Brits, but you’re right, after checking I see that they pronounce it the same. Now I’m wondering: Why does someone, then, bother to create a video on how to pronounce a single word, that otherwise isn’t a problem, (despite the dubious claim that it’s somehow difficult)?
Former electrician: called it a MUL-tih-mee’-ter (secondary accent on “mee”) since day one, as did every other electrician I ever knew.
This is really interesting. It was so much always “mul-TIMM-iter” that the one time I can recall someone asking if they had “mul-ti-MEE-ters,” the clerks and other patrons in the electronics store all smirked at each other when he walked away. The patrons of that store were hobbyists, engineers, techs and other things.
Trying to remember what the Australians called them; can’t bring it to mind. A lot of my other interaction was written, through correspondence and the magazines, so pernunciashun wasn’t a factor.
I was trained by the USNavy as an electronic technician beginning in 1980. I spent eleven years using multimeters on reactor plant instrumentation and for electronic test equipment repair for the Navy. Following that, I used multimeters working instrument repair and quality assurance for three manufacturers; and I am currently using multimeters to perform preventive and corrective maintenance for the USPS.
NOBODY I have interacted with during the past thirty-five years has called them multimeters; they have always been Multimeters.
ETA: The only place I have seen a hand-held digital multimeter referred to as a DVM is in a written instruction for completing a planned field change.
I say MUL-tie-meet-er (not tee but tie) and al-TIM-et-er.
I’ve been working around electronics and electronics people since the 50s. Not once have I ever heard the “TIM” pronunciation of multimeter. It would have been such a startling thing I would have remembered it. Conversely, I’ve never heard once anything other than the “TIM” pronunciation of altimeter, but far less exposure to pilots and such.
Yes, like that, hence my (I know, stupid) joke “It’s a multimeter, it meters multis”.
multimeter, like multilingual.