odometer

American  

[oh-dom-i-ter] / oʊˈdɒm ɪ tər /

noun

odometers plural

1. an instrument for measuring distance traveled, as by an automobile.

---

odometer British  

/ ɒˈdɒmɪtə, əʊ- /

noun

1. Also called: mileometer.  a device that records the number of miles that a bicycle or motor vehicle has travelled

---

odometer Scientific  

/ ō-dŏm′ĭ-tər /

1. An instrument for indicating the distance traveled by a vehicle, typically by measuring the number of rotations of a wheel or fan whose rate of rotation depends on the speed of the vehicle.

2. Compare speedometer

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• odometry
  noun
• odometrical
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• odometers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of odometer

1785–95, variant of hodometer < Greek hodó ( s ) way + -meter

Explanation

The instrument in your car that shows you how far you've driven is called an odometer. When you buy a used car, it's important to check the odometer to see how many miles it has traveled. The odometers in today's cars are electronic, but there may be an odometer on any form of transportation, including your bike, and some of these may run mechanically. There's historical evidence that odometers were used in both ancient Greece and ancient China. In the seventeenth century, odometers measured the distance traveled by horse-drawn carriages. Odometer comes from the Greek roots hodos, "way," and metron, "a measure."

Example Sentences

An Odometer Moment on a Warming Planet For those who might be keeping score, we just passed the 333rd consecutive month of global temperatures above the 20th-century average.

From New York Times • Dec. 17, 2012

Is there a Cal Worthington Foundation to underwrite panels of used-car salesmen discussing "Odometer Tampering: How Far Can We Go"?

From Time Magazine Archive

An Odometer is an apparatus for measuring distances travelled by whatsoever vehicle.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 by Various