speedometer
Americannoun
noun
-
An instrument for indicating the speed of a vehicle, typically by measuring the rate of rotation of a wheel or fan whose rate of rotation depends on the speed of the vehicle.
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Compare odometer
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of speedometer
Explanation
The device in a car that measures how fast you're going is the speedometer. Most speedometers can measure as much as 160 miles per hour — even though it's illegal to drive that fast in the U.S. The traditional speedometer is a dial with a needle that moves to the right as you press on the gas pedal. Sometimes these devices simply display the digital numeric value of your speed, registering 50 and then 48 as the driver begins to slow down. Speedometers began to be a standard feature in automobiles around 1910, just a bit after the word was coined by adding the Greek-derived suffix -meter, or "a measure," to speed.
Vocabulary lists containing speedometer
Frankenwords: Words with Roots from Different Languages
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meter, metr
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The digital display around the speedometer has a mind of its own, often spontaneously changing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 5, 2026
The reading on the speedometer this week is 9.6, the highest since March 2006.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 6, 2026
With “Eddington,” Aster attempts to chronicle how we reached this moment, holding a speedometer to the commotion and tracking how quickly it all fell apart.
From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2025
Mr Woods made no attempt to take evasive action and his speedometer was found frozen at 65mph, though he could have been going faster, she said.
From BBC ● Apr. 3, 2025
Leroy pressed the gas pedal to the floorboard, and the speedometer dial spun around and around before it fluttered at 65.
From "Ceremony:" by Leslie Marmon Silko
E-bikes legal to use on the Burke-Gilman Trail are Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes built with a maximum speed of 20 mph and all have speedometers.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 11, 2023
“People could see this isn’t a chase where there’s a lot of inserts, of cutting to speedometers or a hand revving an engine, and it’s not shaky. It’s just very simple shots, simple dynamic coverage.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2022
Detroit’s Big Three automakers and other global automakers have been forced to cut production and even make some vehicles without features like heated seats or digital speedometers because of semiconductor shortage.
From Reuters ● Nov. 29, 2021
On most older vehicles, the speedometers aren’t accurate anymore.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2016
Had we not been able to determine it accurately by means of the speedometers on our cars, I should never have dared state that they could reach fifty-five or sixty miles an hour.
From Across Mongolian Plains A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' by Andrews, Roy Chapman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
