"the majority of the population" of where?

Calling a pronunciation over half a population choose 'incorrect' needs justification. Note that micrometer (the measuring instrument) is pronounced to rhyme with barometer.

US service people just say it as klometer (those guys also say clicks for short). Or others that aren't so familiar with it. The tonic stress, fyi, goes like this: kilo‘-meter. Not: ki‘ll-o meeter. On lo. The tonic stress is like development, on the second syllable.

Please don't use a computer backslash when a proper slash is required. Better yet, write out whatever word your symbol is meant to represent.

If you're saying that most people really say primeter and brometer where they delete the first vowel altogether, that's news to me.

@tchrist: perimeter and barometer (and probably many other words of the same basic form) would almost always be 3 syllables to me (I delete the first vowel altogether). I find it hard to believe you don't hear that in your area.

@FumbleFingers Wouldn’t a [ˈbɹɑməɾɚ] measure bras? :) I always forget you guys throw so many syllababbles away that we keep, what with all your medsins and semchrees and miltrees and sectrees and Febries and libries and rawzbries. :)

Point of order: The title should say, 'rather than "KEEL o meter"'. Compare kiloton, kiloparsec. The first syllable clearly takes on a "key" pronunciation in most instances where it does get stressed.

@tchrist "computer backslash"? That's a weird qualifier; it's not like there's any other type of backslash. And all computers have always offered both backslash and forward-slash in their character mappings (even pre-Unicode-standardization), so both slashes are "computer" slashes.

@tchrist: Apparently I'm not the most "reductionist" speaker on the planet! The longest one-syllable word in English is squirrelled. Described and spelt in British English, but the one-syllable enunciation itself (skworld) is American!

@FumbleFingers ax in AAVE has nothing to do with a difficulty in articulating sk, it's just a variant of the word that's existed alongside ask continuously since the Old English period (where it appeared as a sporadic metathesis, not due to any difficulty with sk sounds, which are generally retained). Deleting the d in Wednesday is also pretty much universal (certainly in both US and UK standards, as well as all other dialects I'm aware of) and not anything unique to Brits like me (and in fact dn is generally retained, i.e. we say redness not renness)

@FeRD kiloton, kiloparsec, kilogram, etc all have the KIT vowel for me, not the FLEECE vowel. It only has the FLEECE vowel when "kilo" is used as a word in its own right (as an abbreviation of "kilogram"), and not when used as a prefix

@Tristan Same here; I think that's how it works for most native speakers. However, I see that the OED notes that in 1901 there was a KIT pronunciation of the standalone word kilos, making it rhyme with pillows. I’ve definitely never heard it said that way myself, but then again, I was born after 1901. :)

@FeRD Quoth Robert Bringhurst on p. 317 of The Elements of Typographic Style: ”backslash This is an unsolicited gift of the computer keyboard. Basic though it may be to elementary computer operations, it has no accepted function in typography”—and he of all people should know! Similarly, “forward” slash is Microsoft jargon divorced from actual typography. Typographers and scribes have long used the solidus symbol for setting such things as £ / s / d. On p. 331 he further writes “…and solidus became in due course not only a byword for shilling but also the name of the slash mark…”

@FeRD 'all computers have always offered both backslash and forward-slash in their character mappings' -- wrong. There was no blackslash in the BCD and BCDIC codesets, among others. 'so both slashes are "computer" slashes.' -- wrong. Slash long predated computers; backslash did not. And even if that were true, it would be no reason to object tchrist's use of the word "computer".

I've found that BOTH pronunciations are used for km. Even by the same person. And I feel that's the case in US, UK, IND, AUS, CAN. Questions with a big assumption are a bit annoying, BTW. Also @EdwinAshworth I pronounce micrometer both ways! (I realized this phenomenon when I caught myself doing so!)

@Fattie I'd say that very few don't put the stress on the second syllable when speaking of the measuring device.

@Fattie When referring to what? I would say mícrometer for the unit of measurement but probably micrómeter for the measuring tool if I were ever called upon to speak that out loud which I don't think I ever have.

Is that what you would do also, @EdwinAshworth?

Yes; different pronunciations for the different heteronyms (I'd say their etymologies are distinct enough to discount polysemy).