Geometer c.1330, from O.Fr. géométrie, from L. geometria, from Gk. geometria “measurement of earth or land, geometry,” from ge “earth, land” + -metria, from metrein “to measure.”

1. One skilled in geometry; a geometrician.
2. (Zo["o]l.) Any species of geometrid moth; a geometrid.

Over 300 varieties of geometer moth occur in the British Isles, 26,000 worldwide. The family name geometer, meaning literally “earth-measurer”, refers to the method of locomotion of its caterpillars, which lack the means to crawl. Instead the geometer caterpillar grasps the ground ahead with its forelegs, and by drawing up its hind end and arching its body, grips an adjacent point with its hind legs before propelling itself forward, reaching out to clasp a more distant point. In this way it appears that the caterpillar measures the earth by iterations of this same movement, using the length of its own body as its basic unit of measurement.

We take our direction from our leaf-eating namesake and from the many other associations of our name. We value subjective precision, earthbound ambition, and an empiricism grounded in the surfaces of contact between ourselves and the world.

a long, thin, brown caterpillar keeps on pretending to be a dead thin beech-twig, on a little bough at my feet. He had got his hind feet and his fore feet on the twig, and his body looped up like an arch in the air between, when a fly walked up the twig and began to mount the arch of the imitator, not having the least idea that it was on a gentleman’s coat-tails. The caterpillar shook his stern, and the fly made off as if it had seen a ghost. The dead twig and the live twig now remain equally motionless, enjoying their different ways. And when, with this very pencil, I push the head of the caterpillar off from the twig, he remains on his tail, arched forward in air, and oscillating unhappily, like some tiny pendulum ticking. Ticking, ticking in mid-air, arched away from his planted tail. Till at last, after a long minute and a half, he touches the twig again, and subsides into twigginess. The only thing is, the dead beech-twig can’t pretend to be a wagging caterpillar. Yet how the two commune! However, we have our exits and our entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. More than he dreams of, poor darling. And I am entirely at a loss for a moral!
D.H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious

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