A parking meter is the machine you pay to leave a car in a space. Coins in, ticket out, and a clock running against you.
The first one appeared in Oklahoma in 1935 and the idea spread across the world within twenty years. Most are now pay-and-display machines serving a whole street, or an app on a phone, and the individual meter beside each bay is disappearing. Feeding the meter means topping it up, and a traffic warden checking them is one of the least loved figures in any town.
1nounparking meterA machine that takes payment for parking a vehicle.
“He was still hunting for change for the parking meter.”
From parking + meter, modelled after coal-meter, etc.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in In the City, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 13 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word