Once upon a time I bought a cheap pedometer. After a while I grew curious about how it actually worked. Some internet searching failed to turn up anything. A co

Once upon a time I bought a cheap pedometer. After a while I grew curious about how it actually worked. Some internet searching failed to turn up anything. A couple days later, while at work, it suddenly occurred to me that there were probably pedometer nerds and enthusiasts and they probably have web forums that could tell me how it worked. I'm usually a silent thinking but sometimes when I have a sudden idea I'll say it out loud. This was one of those occasions and I started to say "I need to find some pedophile forums!". Fortunately about halfway through I realized that pedophile is not the correct word for "pedometer enthusiast" and managed to not complete the sentence. It turns out that the "pedo" in "pedophile" and the "pedo" in "pedometer" are completely unrelated. In "pedometer" it is not the prefix "pedo" attached to meter. It is "ped" connected to "meter" with "o", similar to the way the "o" is used in "speedometer". The "ped" is a shortening of the Latin "pedis". It came to English via the French pédomètre. The "pedo" in "pedophile" comes from Greek paidos which means "child". I have no idea what the actual word for "pedometer enthusiast" is. For that matter I also am not sure what the correct word for a meter that measures children would be.