Why no Farad or Henry meter?

[armandine2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

I feel a course of general linguistics is over due 

[woofy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

I feel a course of general linguistics is over due 

Its easily done. Separating a deliberate play like this from mistakes can be hard, especially when English is not the first language of many folks here.

[PlainName]

So why don't we call a meter that measures capacitance a Farad Meter (or uFarad meter), or a meter that measures inductance a Henry Meter (or uHenry meter)? We also call a meter that measures power a Watt meter???

We have LCR meters. The reason is that measuring pure capacitance (or inductance) is in practice of very little use, apart from quick checks, that many general-purpose DMMs embed. So that doesn't warrant a dedicated device.
Same for measuring "power". There's more to it than just a value in W, so there's no point in making a dedicated device just measuring that (what power are you talking about anyway?) But there are devices such as "power analyzers", that can measure relevant parameters around the concept of power. Just lie for LCR meters - because a single raw value has no real practical significance, unless again you just need "quick checks", that again many general-purpose devices will offer.

We don't have volt meters either - they are typically multimeters and do at least resistance too. Of course, you can get just plain volt reading meters for niche use, but then I am fairly sure you can also get just plain capacitance meters if you have a niche for one. So why isn't that one a farad meter? Fewer syllables than 'capacitance' too (to head off other objections).

I also don't think that capacitance depending on frequency and/or other stuff is relevant - the whole purpose of a capacitance meter would be to sort all that stuff out for you. That's why you pay the big bucks!

[EPAIII]

Well, if you really feel there is a need for one, then build it and sell it and see how that goes.

[AVGresponding]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

I feel a course of general linguistics is over due 

Its easily done. Separating a deliberate play like this from mistakes can be hard, especially when English is not the first language of many folks here.

Some of the respondents in this thread are native English speakers, and still get it wrong...

I find the OP's observation an intriguing one, and can formulate no logical or consistent answer.

[retiredfeline]

It's just that you usually don't have to monitor capacitance or inductance but monitoring voltage and current is commonplace. Resistance less so, but enough measurements are made that such a meter has a name.

Ammeter is just far easier to say than amperemeter. Voltmeter doesn't trip the tongue so much. If meters for capacitance or inductance were commonplace, I suspect they'd get shortened to farmeter and henmeter.

Of course what really grates is that a potentiometer doesn't measure potentios and is not a meter, but a voltage divider. 

[PlainName]

I suspect they'd get shortened to farmeter and henmeter

Sounds cool! Perhaps we could start a trend tiktok using those 

[switchabl]

Well, the OED dates all of these terms to the 1880s (voltmeter, ammeter, ohmmeter, wattmeter). These would generally have been electromechanical single function instruments.

Capacitors and inductor on the other hand were measured using (manual and later semi-automatic) impedance bridges until well into the 1960/70s. Those probably shouldn't be called meters at all since they were based on substitution. AFAIK it was HP/Yokogawa who introduced the name "LCR meter" with the 4332A. Single function capacitance meters were never really a thing. I suppose they could still have called it "HFO meter" but I guess tastes had changed. Also, popular impedance bridges like the Type 650-A, introduced by General Radio in the 1930s, labelled measurement modes "CRL", so I guess people would have been somewhat familiar with that already.

[JohanH]

I'm looking forward to the memristance meter.

[tooki]

In France, it is pronounced (roughly) "me tre", hence the spelling.
In America, it is pronounced "meet er", hence the spelling.

The word is pronounced the same in the US (where it’s spelled meter) and the UK (where it’s pronounced metre) so this explanation is clearly not correct.

It’s simply a classic example of American English ending in -er where British* English ends in -re. Like theater and center, whose pronunciations are also the same in the US and the UK. (Ignoring rhoticity variants, since both the US and UK have rhotic and non-rhotic dialects.)

*British and all the other non-US dialects, with the possible exception of Canadian, which picks and chooses American or British spellings depending on the word… :p

[tooki]

Of course what really grates is that a potentiometer doesn't measure potentios and is not a meter, but a voltage divider. 

Indeed! It would have made sense to call it a “potentiostat” (a word that has since been claimed for a particular type of test equipment used in electrochemistry), since it sets the potential, much the way a rheostat sets current.

Huh, and look at this: there is a measurement device called a potentiometer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiometer_(measuring_instrument)

Since it contains at its core a potentiometer (i.e. a variable resistor), maybe the variable resistor got its name from this.

[coromonadalix]

I'm Canadian French

We are often using some american slang or the common ones, or the shortest appelations / names 
or mix the english term in french discutions  etc ...  or anything who please   loll

multimêtre, voltmêtre, amperèmêtre, joulemêtre,  "capacimêtre" "Cap meter"  loll

lcr meter, lcr mêtre, voltmeter, "amp meter", electrometer, DMM,  "Meter" aka multimeter

trimpot, pot, slide pot,  potmeter  loll   potentiometer is too long,  but the old techs are still using the long name

[TimFox]

In France, it is pronounced (roughly) "me tre", hence the spelling.
In America, it is pronounced "meet er", hence the spelling.

The word is pronounced the same in the US (where it’s spelled meter) and the UK (where it’s pronounced metre) so this explanation is clearly not correct.

It’s simply a classic example of American English ending in -er where British* English ends in -re. Like theater and center, whose pronunciations are also the same in the US and the UK. (Ignoring rhoticity variants, since both the US and UK have rhotic and non-rhotic dialects.)

*British and all the other non-US dialects, with the possible exception of Canadian, which picks and chooses American or British spellings depending on the word… :p

Note that I said nothing about British pronunciation and spelling in my post.  I was giving my opinion on why American spelling prefers "meter".
The divergence in spelling dates back to Noah Webster's extreme revisions starting in 1806, many of which (such as deleting "u" from "colour" and "ue" from "analogue") have persisted.
His 1828 dictionary is available online:  https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/meter  "This word is most improperly written metre. How very absurd to write the simple word in this manner, but in all its numerous compounds, meter as in diameter, hexameter, thermometer, etc."

[RoGeorge]

In Romanian (a language from the Romance group - like Italian, Spanish, French, etc.) it is spelled 'metru'.
The genealogy of the 'metru' word is from the Greek 'metron', which would translate as 'a/one measure' (as in one unit).

In Ro, all the other 'metru' composed words have the same Greek-like termination:
'diametru', 'hexametru', 'termometru', 'kilometru', etc.

[TimFox]

I assume that in Romanian the pronunciation follows the "tru" spelling?

[RoGeorge]

Indeed.

[TimFox]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from the collision of Romance languages (especially French) with the Germanic languages in the development of the language since 1066 (Norman conquest).
The Roman alphabet is a reasonably efficient coding of Latin pronunciation, but it gets less efficient as the language to be spelled gets more distant from Latin, including Germanic and Slavic languages.
When a Swedish associate tried to help me with a railway timetable, he insisted on pronouncing the station names in correct Swedish, to which I cried out in anguish "Is this is the Roman alphabet we are using here?"

[themadhippy]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from

Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

[TimFox]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from

Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

The problems to which I referred there are more prevalent in the UK than in US.
For example, the pronunciation of "lieutenant".
Specifically, the adoption of French words into the English language (long before 1776) often brought French spellings as baggage, despite native pronunciation of the words themselves.

The best reference for these questions, written, edited, and published by an authoritative UK source is "The Oxford Companion to the English Language", from Oxford University Press  (that's in England).
  https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199661282.001.0001/acref-9780199661282

Similarly, most Austrians speak German, as do many Swiss.
Some Canadians speak French.
Far more people in the Western Hemisphere speak Spanish than those in Spain.
Similarly, for Portuguese.
Live with it!

[RoGeorge]

Intriguingly, in English it's 'metronome' (etymology Greek 'metron' - the measure, plus 'nomos' - regulating).
By the form 'meter', one would expect the spelling to be 'meternome', yet it is spelled 'metronome'. 

[TimFox]

In English (both UK and US), "metronome" and "metrology" are pronounced as in that spelling, with "tro" instead of "ter".
("Meteorology" is from a different Greek root.)
The important pronunciation difference is whether the Greek root is at the beginning or end of the word.
Unfortunately, Americans often insist on spelling "theater" (as it is pronounced) as "theatre" (to feign Frenchness).
However, "theatrical" is always spelled in an analogous fashion to "metronome", again following pronunciation, where the Greek root is at the beginning.

Note that in both the UK and US, "metre/meter", "litre/liter", "theatre/theater", etc. are always pronounced with "ter".

Also, "meter" meaning measurement device and "parameter" are always spelled "ter" in English.
Since the metric system was first developed in France, French names (metre, litre, etc.) were applied to the new units, but when English-speaking people adopted them, the pronunciations quickly went to "ter".

[Ground_Loop]

[/quote]

We don't have volt meters either - they are typically multimeters and do at least resistance too. Of course, you can get just plain volt reading meters for niche use, but then I am fairly sure
[/quote]
Yea we do.

[tooki]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from

Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

Yyyyeah, that’s not how languages work, buddy. The fact that you and I can understand each other without any difficulty is a very strong indicator that we are using the same language. (Mutual intelligibility is a core criterion for whether two systems of speech are considered to be distinct languages vs. different dialects of the same language.)

Bringing politics into the picture gets you the situation of Serbo-Croatian, whose two main dialects are now referred to as separate languages by their speakers, due to the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Linguistically speaking, they’re the same language, just as both British English and American English are dialects of “English”, which refers to all dialects of it.

I’ve said this before and I'll say it again and again: it’s absolutely incredible (in the sense of incredulity, not admiration) how condescending, dismissive, and aggressive the British get towards Americans regarding the language, despite the fact that modern British English (in its numerous regional dialects) and modern American English have both evolved away from our ancestral English of 400 years ago. Certainly neither dialect has any claim on being any more “correct” or “authentic” nowadays. And it’s also well-documented that where British and American English differ, it’s often American English that stays closer to the ancestral form. That’s not the case in this instance, but it is true a lot more often than you’d think. As for Americans: I’m not sure we should take any crap about our English from the country that is also home to Cockney and countless other regional dialects that teeter on the brink of unintelligibility. They have “bastardized” their language every bit as much as we have, arguably more so.

[AVGresponding]

It's just that you usually don't have to monitor capacitance or inductance but monitoring voltage and current is commonplace. Resistance less so, but enough measurements are made that such a meter has a name.

Ammeter is just far easier to say than amperemeter. Voltmeter doesn't trip the tongue so much. If meters for capacitance or inductance were commonplace, I suspect they'd get shortened to farmeter and henmeter.

Of course what really grates is that a potentiometer doesn't measure potentios and is not a meter, but a voltage divider. 

A potentiometer meters out electrical potential, hence the name.

[andre_teprom]

I guess we don't have Farad and Henry meters because they're not as commonly needed in everyday electrical measurements. Farads are more about capacitance, and Henrys deal with inductance, which are usually used in more specialized situations.