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meter, abbr. m, fundamental unit of length in the metric system. The meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the equator and either pole; however, the original survey was inaccurate and the meter was later defined simply as the distance between two scratches on a bar made of a platinum-iridium alloy and kept at Sevres, France, near Paris. More recently, it has been defined as the distance light travels through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. The meter is now the legal standard of length for most of the world, other standards, such as the yard, being defined in terms of the meter.
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