A metrical signature is like an accent, or a particular qualitative factor that makes a voice recognizable, or combination of features that make a face into a Gestalt. Since it's qualitative, it can't be measured, exactly, though it might have some statistical tendencies.
It is interesting that we use "measure" as our idea of verse. That's what meter means. In older metrical treatises the word favored is "numbers." Meter has to be numerical in some way. The number doesn't give the Gestalt, though. That would be like saying that human faces are all the same, if they have the same basic components, two eyes, below that a nose, ears on the side, etc...
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