millimeter

American  

[mil-uh-mee-ter] / ˈmɪl əˌmi tər /

especially British, millimetre

noun

1. a unit of length equal to one thousandth of a meter and equivalent to 0.03937 inch. mm

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millimeter Scientific  

/ mĭl′ə-mē′tər /

1. A unit of length in the metric system equal to 0.001 meter.

2. See Table at measurement

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Other Word Forms

• millimetric adjective

Etymology

Origin of millimeter

First recorded in 1800–10; from French millimètre; milli-, meter ¹

Example Sentences

Researchers examining spiders and scorpions at the Zoological Collections Laboratory of the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, noticed something unusual on a spider only a few millimeters long.

From Science Daily

To achieve this, the team built a bar-shaped device about half a millimeter long.

From Science Daily

Achieving higher resolution usually means placing the lens extremely close to the object, sometimes just millimeters away.

From Science Daily

Most are smaller than a millimeter, which is why they often go unnoticed.

From Science Daily

According to Miskin, independence at sizes below one millimeter has remained an unsolved challenge.

From Science Daily