I was taking the additional meaning from original Latin, which means also to measure, or it could also refer to a rhythm or a beat as in poetry and music. The word "meter" is very commonly used to describe a repeating accent or emphasis in written words or music. The fact that someone has actually tried to "measure" time to come up with values to use for seconds, minutes, days, instead of choosing some already established weight falling against some random spring or something, leads me to think of time measuring we use, as metric.
It just needs to be more accurate, I think.