Friday, 18 December 2015

etymology - What's the word or name for a person who can naturally & accurately estimate measurements such as size, capacity, ballance & angles?

A related word, although perhaps not the one you want, is savant, in the sense of a person exhibiting savant syndrome. (Typically, such people have a disability that savant skills partly offset.) The wikipedia article on this topic mentions spatial skills as among the “five major areas” for savant skills. It also says:




No widely accepted cognitive theory explains savants' combination of talent and deficit. ... Another hypothesis is that savants hyper-systemize, thereby giving an impression of talent. ... Also, the attention to detail shown by many savants is a consequence of enhanced perception or sensory hypersensitivity in these unique individuals. It has also been confirmed that some savants operate by directly accessing low-level, less-processed information that exists in all human brains but is normally unavailable to conscious awareness.




On another tack (suggested by other answer) the term eagle-eyed describes someone who is perceptive and has excellent visual acuity.

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