altimeter

Note: The word altimeter appears in the word lists of early Latin-English dictionaries, as the 1572 edition of Richard Huloet's dictionary and the 1578 edition of Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae (defined as "an instrument wherwith high things are mette"). These entries all appear to derive from versions of Papias' Latin dictionary Elementarium doctrinae rudimentum, composed in the 11th century, but reedited and expanded many times; the 1485 Venice edition enters "altimeter quo metiuntur altitudines - quoddam instrumentum est" ("altimeter by which heights are measured; it is a certain instrument"). Cf. New Latin scala altimetra, with vernacular equivalents, as Middle French eschelle altimetre, applied to the graduated scale of various instruments for measuring angular distance above the horizon. As a word used in the early 20th century for instruments employing barometric pressure to measure altitude, the word may be a recoinage from Latin altus and -meter.